GLAAD report says Meta allows anti-trans hate to ‘flourish’ on its platforms

Image: Vjeran Pavic

GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ media advocacy group, claims that Meta’s contented moderation strategy is allowing an “epidemic of anti-transgender hate” to flourish connected its platform. A new report published by the radical says Meta has allowed dozens of anti-trans posts — including ones that telephone for unit against backstage individuals — to enactment online. The enactment says that LGBTQ+ radical “experience an expanding fig of well-documented real-world harms” owed to “propaganda campaigns, driven by the anti-LGBTQ extremists that Meta allows to flourish connected its platforms.”

The study documents respective examples of anti-trans contented posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads betwixt June 2023 and March of this year, each of which GLAAD reported via Meta’s “standard level reporting systems.” Some of the posts utilized hateful anti-trans slurs, portion others — including an Instagram station depicting a idiosyncratic being beaten with stones that person been replaced by the laughing emoji — telephone transgender radical “demonic” and “satanic.” Several posts impeach transgender radical of being “sexual predators,” “perverts,” and “groomers,” which, successful caller years, has been utilized arsenic an anti-LGBTQ+ slur.

According to GLAAD’s findings, Meta often fails to region posts that interruption its ain hatred code policies. After GLAAD flagged posts that violated Meta’s hatred code policies, “Meta either replied that posts were not violative oregon simply did not instrumentality enactment connected them,” the study reads.

Some of the posts were made by salient accounts, including Libs of TikTok, which is tally by far-right influencer Chaya Raichik. Raichik has become a fixture successful blimpish schoolhouse committee authorities successful caller years. In January, she was appointed to Oklahoma’s authorities room advisory committee. The study claims a “prominent anti-LGBTQ extremist account” created Facebook and Instagram posts attacking a sex nonconforming simple schoolhouse teacher successful Kitsap, Washington, aft which the schoolhouse received a bomb threat. The quality nonfiction cited successful the study identifies the relationship arsenic Raichik’s.

“Meta itself acknowledges successful its nationalist statements and successful its ain policies that hatred code ‘creates an situation of intimidation and exclusion, and successful immoderate cases whitethorn beforehand offline violence,’” GLAAD said successful a connection to The Washington Post.

Meta has not lone allowed this contented to enactment connected its societal media platforms but has besides profited from it: a 2022 Media Matters report recovered that Meta had tally astatine slightest 150 ads connected its platforms accusing radical of being “groomers.” That year, Meta told the Daily Dot that making baseless accusations that LGBTQ+ radical are groomers is simply a usurpation of its hatred code policies. Meta suspended the “Gays Against Groomers” Facebook relationship past September but aboriginal restored it. Meta told the Daily Dot that the suspension was the effect of a level error.

In January, Meta’s Oversight Board overturned the company’s determination not to region a post encouraging transgender radical to perpetrate suicide. The committee noted that 11 antithetic users had reported the station 12 times, but Meta’s automated systems lone prioritized 2 of those posts for quality review. Both of the reviewers “assessed it arsenic non-violating and did not escalate it further.” The station was lone removed aft the committee officially took up the appeal.

The issue, the committee claimed, was not that Meta didn’t person capable policies against hatred code but that it failed to enforce them. The committee recovered that the idiosyncratic down the archetypal station had antecedently harassed trans radical online and had created a caller Facebook relationship aft being suspended successful the past. “Meta’s repeated nonaccomplishment to instrumentality the close enforcement action, contempt aggregate signals astir the post’s harmful content, leads the Board to reason the institution is not surviving up to the ideals it has articulated connected LGBTQIA+ safety,” the committee wrote.

Meta did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.