2025 Social Media Safety Index

In the 2025 Platform Scorecard, Facebook and Instagram each receive a score of 45, while Threads receives a score of 40. In a major set of policy changes that have been widely denounced by human rights advocates and tech policy experts,^[1] Meta revised its “Hateful Conduct” policy this year to expressly allow and encourage hate, harassment, and discrimination against LGBTQ people.^[2] As one example, according to the updated policy, Meta “allow[s] allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism [sic] and homosexuality [sic]…”^[3] These harmful policy changes coincide and align with the increasing political attacks on LGBTQ people and their rights, and contribute to a larger societal anti-LGBTQ animus that leaves LGBTQ people vulnerable to increasing levels of hate and harassment online and off.

Meta should remove these harmful exceptions from its “Hateful Conduct” policy and provide LGBTQ people with strong protections against hate, harassment, and violence on its platforms.

Facebook’s policies also fail to adequately protect LGBTQ people in several other key areas. According to its “Gender Identity Policy and User Tools” policy, Meta prohibits targeted misgendering. However, this policy document is not easy to locate and doesn’t reside in Meta’s Transparency Center. Tier 3 of Meta’s “Bullying and Harassment” policy further states that “all private minors, private adults (who must self-report), and minor involuntary public figures are protected from: … Claims about romantic involvement, sexual orientation or gender identity.” However, unlike the “Gender Identity Policy and User Tools” policy, the “Bullying and Harassment” policy does not contain any explicit examples that make it clear whether targeted misgendering falls under this policy. In addition, it is not clear whether the company will continue to enforce its targeted misgendering policy in light of Meta’s significant changes to its “Hateful Conduct” policy. While the updated policy does not specifically address targeted misgendering, several provisions explicitly permit different forms of hate speech and harassment against LGBTQ people (and other historically marginalized groups). GLAAD will continue to closely monitor how Meta’s policy changes will impact LGBTQ people on its platforms. We will also closely monitor how Meta’s enforcement of its newly revised “Hateful Conduct” policy will impact its apparent commitment to protecting transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people from targeted misgendering.

In addition to other critical changes to its “Hateful Conduct” policy noted above, we expect the company to include an explicit commitment in its Community Standards that protects LGBTQ people from targeted deadnaming on the platforms. The company should also explain in detail how this policy is enforced. Moreover, this policy should also cover public figures and should not require self-reporting by the targeted individual.

To better protect LGBTQ users’ privacy and give them full control over their own data, Meta’s public-facing policies should provide comprehensive information on the options that users have to control the collection, inference, and use of data related to their sexual orientation and gender identity. Meta currently provides insufficient transparency on this topic.

Facebook and other Meta platforms do receive credit on the Scorecard’s new “conversion therapy” content indicator. In its “Hateful Conduct” policy, Meta prohibits content promoting so-called “conversion therapy.” However, the policy also contains a notable caveat as Meta states that it “require[s] additional information and/or context to enforce” this prohibition. It is not clear from the policy how users can provide this additional information or context. According to this policy, users should not post “content explicitly providing or offering to provide products or services that aim to change people’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” Since advertisers must comply with Meta’s Community Standards, harmful “conversion therapy” content is therefore also prohibited in Meta ads.

In its “2024 Responsible Business Practices Report,” Meta made a commitment to “building a workforce that’s as diverse as the communities we serve.” In the same report, the company also published partial data on its LGBTQ workforce. However, the company announced more recently that it would abandon its diversity and inclusion efforts.^[4] It is important to note that this significant policy reversal in Meta’s commitment to DEI is not reflected in the 2025 SMSI Platform Scorecard data. As our research for the SMSI Platform Scorecard is based on public-facing company policies published in the previous year, we expect that this policy change will be reflected in our 2026 Scorecard.