Six of the nation’s main social media platforms are failing to maintain LGBTQ customers protected from on-line bullying and harassment and quell the unfold of disinformation, in keeping with a brand new report from GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy group.
Now in its fifth yr, GLAAD’s Social Media Security Index evaluates insurance policies and product options of TikTok, X, YouTube, and Meta’s Instagram, Fb and Threads on greater than a dozen LGBTQ-specific indicators, together with whether or not platforms have public-facing insurance policies in opposition to deadnaming and misgendering or rules stopping customers from participating in hate speech that targets LGBTQ individuals.
The social media panorama has shifted drastically because the group revealed its first report in 2021, mentioned Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD’s president and CEO, “with new and dangerous challenges in 2025.”
In January, Meta, owned by Fb co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, dropped a few of its guidelines defending LGBTQ individuals, permitting customers to share “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.”
The up to date language, a part of a broader overhaul of the social media large’s content material moderation practices, additionally permits customers to argue for “gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs” and sex- or gender-based exclusion from areas like restrooms and sports activities.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Zuckerberg mentioned in a video asserting the brand new insurance policies. He mentioned the November elections, which noticed Republicans retake management of Congress and the White Home, “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”
President Trump celebrated the up to date insurance policies, which included eliminating the corporate’s third-party fact-checking program.
In its report on Tuesday, GLAAD referred to as the modifications at Meta “draconian” and mentioned the corporate ought to restore sections of its hateful conduct coverage that shielded LGBTQ individuals from harassment. The group mentioned it was additionally “deeply concerned” about what it mentioned was an identical coverage shift at YouTube, which eliminated gender identification and expression from its hate speech coverage’s record of protected traits final month.
In a publish on X, the social platform owned by billionaire and Trump White Home advisor Elon Musk, YouTube mentioned it eliminated that language as a part of a “routine” copy edit to its Assist Heart, and its coverage in opposition to hate speech had not modified. YouTube’s public-facing coverage states it doesn’t enable content material that promotes violence or hatred in opposition to people based mostly on “Sex, Gender, or Sexual Orientation.”
Every of the six platforms didn’t move GLAAD’s analysis, with TikTok scoring the best, 56 out of a doable 100, and X, at 30, scoring the bottom.
A TikTok spokesperson declined to touch upon GLAAD’s findings. Representatives for X, YouTube and Meta didn’t return requests for remark.
“At a time when real-world violence and harassment against LGBTQ people is on the rise, social media companies are profiting from the flames of anti-LGBTQ hate instead of ensuring the basic safety of LGBTQ users,” mentioned Ellis in a press release on Tuesday. “These low scores should terrify anyone who cares about creating safer, more inclusive online spaces.”
GLAAD acknowledged Tuesday in its report that some firms have labored to make LGBTQ customers, notably transgender customers, safer on their platforms.
TikTok’s hate and harassment insurance policies, as an illustration, “provide the most comprehensive protections for LGBTQ people,” in keeping with the group’s report, together with a prohibition on intentional deadnaming and misgendering, and YouTube this yr rolled again a coverage that allowed advertisers to exclude some customers from seeing advertisements based mostly on their sexual orientation or gender identification.
Advertisers on YouTube are additionally prohibited from selling conversion remedy, a discredited follow that goals to alter an individual’s gender identification or sexual orientation, however the platform has not adopted an identical coverage for particular person customers, in keeping with GLAAD.
Whereas ranked lowest on the group’s scorecard, X is one in every of simply two platforms — the opposite being TikTok — that prohibit each focused misgendering and deadnaming, although that safety is granted solely “where required by local laws,” in keeping with X’s abuse and harassment insurance policies. The corporate additionally “must always hear from the target” to find out whether or not a violation has occurred, successfully requiring focused people to have interaction with and report content material that could be in opposition to the principles.
Jenni Olson, GLAAD’s senior director of social media security, mentioned tech firms “are taking unprecedented leaps backwards” of their insurance policies concerning focused harassment.
“This is not normal,” she mentioned in a press release. “Our communities deserve to live in a world that does not generate or profit off of hate.”
