NEW GLAAD REPORT — UNSAFE: META FAILS TO MODERATE EXTREME ANTI-TRANS HATE ACROSS FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, AND THREADS

New report shows extreme dehumanizing and disturbing anti-trans content — reported by GLAAD to Meta, which Meta deemed to be not in violation of its policies or did not take action on

“The company’s ongoing failure to enforce their own policies against anti-LGBTQ, and especially anti-trans hate is simply unacceptable.”
— GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis

(New York, NY — March 27, 2024) – Today, GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization released a damning new report, Unsafe: Meta Fails to Moderate Extreme Anti-trans Hate Across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The report is a sobering showcase of dozens of examples of extreme and disturbing anti-trans content targeting transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people — posts that GLAAD reported but which Meta either deemed to be not in violation of its policies or did not take action on. The posts, most by high-follower anti-LGBTQ hate accounts, target trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people with slurs and false dehumanizing tropes (including describing trans people as “satanic,” “sexual predators,” “terrorists,” “mentally ill,” “perverts,” and “tr*nnies”). Other content features instances of violent speech; targeted harassment of individuals and violent incitement; targeted misgendering; content promoting so-called “conversion therapy;” and intentional coded, genocidal calls for “eradication.” All of these things are expressly prohibited in Meta’s Community Standards.

Read the full report here: Unsafe: Meta Fails to Moderate Extreme Anti-trans Hate Across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. (Screenshots of select content available to press upon request.)

The report is a follow up to a June 2023 LGBTQ Celebrities & Allies open letter facilitated by GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, which called on social media platforms, including Meta, to address the epidemic of anti-trans hate on its platforms — citing harmful lies about transgender healthcare, malicious anti-LGBTQ “groomer” narratives, and relentless bullying and harassment of trans public figures. The 250+ signatories of the letter, which received extensive national media coverage, included such high-profile names as Elliot Page, Laverne Cox, Jamie Lee Curtis, Shawn Mendes, Janelle Monáe, Gabrielle Union, Judd Apatow, Ariana Grande, and Jonathan Van Ness.

“GLAAD, HRC, and 250+ LGBTQ celebrities and allies urged Meta nine months ago to create and share a plan to address the epidemic of anti-trans hate on their platforms,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “The company’s ongoing failure to enforce its own policies against anti-LGBTQ, and especially anti-trans hate is simply unacceptable. The ongoing inaction and silence is an active choice, showing that Meta is not living up to its company values and most importantly, is not protecting its trans and gender nonconforming users.”

Disturbing and Violent Posts Permitted

Among the disturbing, and often violent, posts are memes depicting mob violence against trans people while referring to them as “devils;” right-wing media pundits saying trans people are “disgusting perverts;” posts selling services claiming to be able to change people’s sexual orientation and gender identity (“conversion therapy”); and targeted harassment of healthcare providers featuring their names and photos with the ominous prompt “What do you think should be done to doctors that perform ‘gender affirming care’ surgeries on minors?”

Alongside the posts, the report also includes excerpts from the policies they appear to violate (including Meta’s hate speech, violence and incitement, bullying and harassment, and suicide and self-injury policies). All posts were reported by GLAAD via Meta’s standard platform reporting systems from June 2023 – March 2024. Meta determined that none are in violation of its policies or did not take action on them.

The report comes on the heels of the January 2024 Oversight Board ruling in the “Post in Polish Targeting Trans People” case (which involved an anti-trans Facebook post that Meta content moderators repeatedly determined was not in violation of its policies, despite multiple reports from users). In its ruling, the Oversight Board (the body that makes non-binding but precedent-setting rulings about Meta content moderation cases) cited “Meta’s repeated failure to take the correct enforcement action” on the extreme anti-trans hate post, which clearly violated Meta’s own policies. Meta’s enforcement failures have prompted repeated rebukes and concern from the Oversight Board. As Axios and The Verge have documented, some users find that their reports on harmful content are not reviewed at all.

GLAAD Reiterates Demands for Action

Calling for urgent action from Meta, the report notes that: “LGBTQ people and other targeted groups experience an increasing number of well-documented real-world harms stemming from these long-term anti-LGBTQ propaganda campaigns, driven by the anti-LGBTQ extremists that Meta allows to flourish on its platforms. Meta itself acknowledges in its public statements and in its own policies that hate speech ‘creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.’ Such acknowledgements of its own culpability make Meta’s negligence and refusal to protect people from such hate (not only trans, nonbinary, and LGBTQ people — but countless other historically marginalized groups) all the more shocking.”

The report concludes by reiterating the demands of the June 2023 LGBTQ Celebrities & Allies open letter: Meta (and other platforms) must urgently create and share plans for addressing: Content that spreads malicious lies and disinformation about healthcare for transgender youth; accounts and postings that perpetuate anti-LGBTQ extremist hate and disinformation (including the anti-LGBTQ “groomer” trope), in violation of platform policies; dehumanizing, hateful attacks on prominent transgender public figures and influencers; and anti-transgender hate speech, including targeted misgendering, deadnaming, and hate-driven tropes.

As highlighted in GLAAD’s 2023 Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) report, Meta is largely failing to mitigate dangerous anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation, despite such content violating their own policies. The SMSI also recommends to Meta and others that they must better train moderators on the needs of LGBTQ users, and enforce policies around anti-LGBTQ content across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions. The 2024 edition of the SMSI is forthcoming this summer.

Additional Background on the Oversight Board Case:

On March 15, 2024, in response to the Oversight Board ruling, Meta’s Transparency Center issued an update that the company is “assessing feasibility” of ensuring that “flag-based visual depictions of gender identity … are understood as representations of a group defined by the gender identity of its members.” Read GLAAD’s full statement here.

The post was an egregious example of anti-trans hate advocating for transgender people to commit suicide, featuring an image of a striped curtain in the blue, pink, and white colors of the transgender flag with a text overlay in Polish saying: ‘New technology. Curtains that hang themselves.’ The post was repeatedly flagged by users, but Meta’s content moderators allowed the post to remain. The post was only removed after the Oversight Board alerted Meta. The case illuminates systemic failures with the company’s moderation practices — including widespread failure to enforce their own policies, as noted by the Oversight Board and in GLAAD’s September 2023 public comment to the Oversight Board for the adjudication of the case.

In 2023 GLAAD Social Media Safety Index All Major Social Media Platforms Fail on LGBTQ Safety

The third annual GLAAD Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) & Platform Scorecard was released in June 2023. After reviewing the platforms on 12 LGBTQ-specific indicators, all platforms received low and failing scores:

• Instagram: 63%
• Facebook: 61%
• TikTok: 57%
• YouTube: 54%
• Twitter: 33%

Key findings of the 2023 SMSI included:

• Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on social media translates to real-world offline harms.
• Social media platforms are largely failing to mitigate this dangerous hate and disinformation and inadequately enforce their own policies.
• There is a lack of true transparency reporting from the platforms.

The 2024 GLAAD Social Media Safety Index is forthcoming in Summer 2024.

About the GLAAD Social Media Safety program:
GLAAD’s Social Media Safety program actively researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression — advocating for solutions in numerous realms. The annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) provides recommendations for the industry at large and reports on LGBTQ user safety across the six major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, YouTube, and TikTok. Learn more by reading the annual GLAAD Social Media Safety Index & Platform Scorecard here.