GLAAD SUBMITS PUBLIC COMMENT TO META OVERSIGHT BOARD ON ANTI-TRANS HATE AND HARASSMENT CASE

Oversight Board to Issue Recommendation on Anti-Trans Videos after Meta Refuses to Take Action

“While there are legitimate conversations to be had that are related to transgender people and issues in society, such expression should not be predicated on dehumanizing rhetoric, misinformation, and outright lies.”

(New York, NY — September 12, 2024) GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, today submitted a formal public comment to the Oversight Board, the body that makes non-binding but precedent-setting rulings about Facebook, Instagram, and Threads content moderation cases. GLAAD’s submission addresses an important anti-transgender hate content case, centered in the United States (“Gender Identity Debate Videos” — full details here). The case concerns two videos that target a transgender adult and a transgender minor, and promote animus and advocate for exclusion of trans people overall.

The first Facebook video shows a cisgender woman confronting a transgender woman for using the women’s bathroom, intentionally misgendering the trans woman as “a man” and asking “why it is permitted for them to use a women’s bathroom,” the Oversight Board states.

In the second case, an Instagram account posted a video of a trans girl winning a female sports competition. The account intentionally misgenders her, referring to the athlete as a “boy” and also, according to the Oversight Board, “questions whether they are female.” In the proactive denying of their gender identities and accompanying public provocation, both pieces of content invite viewers to partake in the harassment.

Meta’s Community Standards prohibit hate and harassment of people on the basis of protected characteristics, including gender identity. The Oversight Board states in its case summary: “Both posts were shared in 2024 and received thousands of views and reactions. They were reported for Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment multiple times, but Meta left both posts up on Facebook and Instagram, respectively. After appealing to Meta against the company’s decisions, two of the users who reported the content then appealed to the Oversight Board.” The Board took public comments through September 12.

Citing its extensive 2023 analysis of the harms associated with targeted misgendering and deadnaming on social media, as well as its Online Hate = Offline Harm section of the 2024 Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) report, GLAAD’s comment notes that:

“Targeted misgendering is a (creative) form of hate speech. With malicious intent, it seeks to mock, denigrate, and dehumanize transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people in violation of Meta’s Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies. It should be mitigated in accordance with all of Meta’s applicable policies and sub-policies … right-wing politicians and anti-LGBTQ commentators continue to promote inflammatory mischaracterizations of trans healthcare, baseless false assertions of LGBTQ people and our allies being threats to children, and malicious framings of LGBTQ people and identities as ‘ideologies’ — all as an obvious blatant political strategy for attacking our basic equality and civil rights. Such dangerous fear-mongering and scapegoating of marginalized groups is part of why social media platforms created their hate speech policies in the first place: to protect not only these groups but all platform users, as well as advertisers, from being surrounded by false and harmful content. While there are legitimate conversations to be had that are related to transgender people and issues in society, such expression should not be predicated on dehumanizing rhetoric, misinformation, and outright lies.”

Read GLAAD’s full public comment here.

“GLAAD continues to advocate that Meta must improve development and enforcement of its policies, so that the company can better serve the safety, privacy, and expression of LGBTQ users across its platforms,” a GLAAD spokesperson said.

As highlighted in GLAAD’s 2024 Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) report, Meta’s Facebook, Threads, and Instagram are largely failing to mitigate dangerous anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation, despite such content conflicting with their own policies. The June 2024 SMSI also recommends that Meta and other companies better train moderators on the needs of LGBTQ users.

Meta’s enforcement failures have elicited longtime concern from the Oversight Board, trust and safety experts, human rights advocates, and even Meta’s shareholders.

Research on the impacts of Meta’s policies on freedom of expression and the rights of transgender people:

• Meta acknowledges in its Community Standards that online hate “​​creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.”
• A 2024 GLAAD report found that Meta is failing to moderate extreme anti-trans hate across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
• According to a 2024 Online Hate and Harassment report, 63% of transgender respondents reported that they had experienced online harassment in the last year, which happened most frequently on Meta’s Facebook.
• According to the Trevor Project, 27% of transgender and nonbinary young people in the U.S. reported that “they have been physically threatened or harmed in the past year due to their gender identity.”
• GLAAD’s 2024 Accelerating Acceptance report found that 89% of non-LGBTQ Americans believe that LGBTQ people (including transgender people) should have the freedom to live their lives and not be discriminated against.

Research on the US sociopolitical context concerning freedom of expression and the rights of transgender people: 

• GLAAD’s Debunking the “Bathroom Bill” Myth report states: Opponents of nondiscrimination protections for trans people “typically focus on generating fears about bathrooms, falsely claiming that such laws will make it legal for sexual predators to enter women’s restrooms … This is despite a lack of evidence to support their claims that transgender people put anyone in danger while in the restroom that aligns with the gender they live every day … These claims are simply untrue. It is important to note that nondiscrimination protections for transgender people do not change long-standing laws that make it illegal for anyone to enter a public restroom for the purpose of harassing or harming another person, or invading their privacy.”
• GLAAD’s 11th Annual Media Reference Guide section on LGBTQ People and Sports states: “Transgender athletes face uninformed opposition. Negative stereotypes and feelings about so-called ‘advantages’ transgender women have are not based in science, facts or evidence. Sport governing organizations like the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the National College Athletics Associate (NCAA), as well as the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), have looked at the science associated with medical transition and made clear statements in support of the right of transgender athletes to participate in a way that is fair, equitable, and respectful to all.”

Additional Background: Major Social Media Platforms Fail on LGBTQ Safety

The fourth annual GLAAD Social Media Safety Index & Platform Scorecard was released in June 2024. After reviewing six major platforms on 12 LGBTQ-specific indicators, all received low and failing scores:

• TikTok: 67%
• Instagram: 58%
• Facebook: 58%
• YouTube: 58%
• Threads: 51%
• Twitter/X: 41%

Key findings of the 2024 SMSI include:

• Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on social media translates to real-world offline harms.
• Anti-LGBTQ hate speech and disinformation continues to be an alarming public health and safety issue.
• Platforms are largely failing to mitigate this dangerous hate and disinformation and inadequately enforce their own policies.
• Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, including via removal, demonetization, and shadowbanning.
• There is a lack of effective, meaningful transparency reporting from the platforms.

About the GLAAD Social Media Safety program:
As the leading national LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD is working every day to hold tech companies and social media platforms accountable, and to secure safe online spaces for LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Social Media Safety (SMS) program researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression. The SMS program has consulted directly with platforms and tech companies on some of the most significant LGBTQ policy and product developments over the years. In addition to ongoing advocacy work with platforms (including TikTok, X/Twitter, YouTube, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and others), and issuing the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) report, the SMS program produces resources, guides, publications, and campaigns, and actively works to educate the general public and raise awareness in the media about LGBTQ social media safety issues, especially anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation.