Social Media Safety Program

GLAAD’s Social Media Safety program is working every day to hold social media platforms, tech, and AI companies accountable, and to secure safer online spaces for LGBTQ people.

Read the full 2025 Social Media Safety Index & Platform Scorecard report here.

The annual GLAAD Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) & Platform Scorecard provides recommendations for the industry and evaluates six major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, and TikTok with a focus on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. After reviewing the platforms across 14 LGBTQ-specific indicators, these are the scores for the 2025 Platform Scorecard:

TikTok: 56%
Facebook: 45%
Instagram: 45%
YouTube: 41%
Threads: 40%
X: 30%

Resources

Key findings in the 2025 SMSI include:

Recent hate speech policy rollbacks from Meta and YouTube present grave threats to safety and are harmful to LGBTQ people.
Platforms are largely failing to mitigate harmful anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation that violates their own policies.
Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, via removal, demonetization, and shadowbanning.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on social media translates to offline harm.
Platforms continue to withhold meaningful transparency about content moderation, algorithms, data protection, and data privacy practices.

Recommendations:

Strengthen and enforce (or restore) existing policies that protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and misinformation, and also from suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.
Train moderators on the needs of LGBTQ users, and moderate across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions. AI systems should be used to flag for human review, not for automated removals.
Work with independent researchers to provide transparency about content moderation, use of AI and algorithms, and related topics.
Respect data privacy. Platforms should reduce the amount of data they collect, infer, and retain, and cease the practice of targeted surveillance advertising.

About the GLAAD Social Media Safety Program

As the leading national LGBTQ media advocacy organization, GLAAD is working every day to hold social media platforms, tech, and AI companies accountable, and to secure safer online spaces for LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Social Media Safety Program produces the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) and researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression.

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