GLAAD, the largest advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ , accuses Meta in its new report of allowing hate against the trans community to a dangerous extent on its platform.
In the report, GLAAD provides evidence that shows how Meta’s
moderation system has enabled a large number of violent and hateful posts against
trans people, that are potentially responsible for propaganda campaigns and
offline violence. The evidence cited exhibits posts with anti-trans content
posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads from June 2023 to March 2024 by
anti-trans extremists.
The posts appear to consist of hateful language and slur, which GLAAD has reported to Meta via its standard reporting systems. However, the organization asserts that Meta’s systems either failed to recognize the reported content as problematic or refused to take it down, even though it clearly violated the company’s policy against hate speech. This in turn poses real-life harm to the LGBTQ+ community.
What adds to the problem, as put forth by GLAAD, is that some
of these posts are even owned by influential accounts, such as Libs of TikTok.
This is, however, not the first time that Meta appears to be
lacking in action in support of the LGBTQ+ on its platform. A report from 2022 found
that Meta had even been profiting off of such content by running ads that
accused people of being groomers. The company also restored an account that accused
LGBTQ+ people of being groomers after suspending it first and calling it a
platform error.
