2025 Social Media Safety Index

2025 Social Media Safety Index Platform Scorecard

The 2025 SMSI Platform Scorecard consists of 14 indicators that draw on best practices from the Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) Big Tech Scorecard, the highly-respected evaluation of the world’s most powerful digital platforms on their policies and practices affecting people’s rights to freedom of expression and privacy. All evaluations are conducted looking at the public-facing policies of each platform. While results have global implications for LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression online, our analysis is based on the English-language versions of public-facing policies and documents covering the U.S. market. Additional methodology information is available in the Research Guidance. The full list of indicators and elements used in the evaluation process is available here. Please also see the important contextual note about the 2025 Platform Scorecard and Methodology Changes.

The Platform Scorecard evaluates six major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Threads (whose parent company is Meta); TikTok (parent company: ByteDance); YouTube (parent company: Alphabet/Google), and X.

LOCAL MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY INDEX – U.S. SOUTH

Fair, accurate, and inclusive news media coverage is vital to expanding public awareness and understanding of LGBTQ people. While recent decades have shown remarkable advancements in accurate reporting on issues affecting our lives and increasingly nuanced portrayals of the incredible diversity within LGBTQ communities, many reporters, editors, and producers continue to face challenges covering LGBTQ issues in a complex, sometimes rhetorically charged climate.

The U.S. South has the highest concentration of LGBTQ Americans of any region, in states without statewide laws protecting them from discrimination.