A well-known LGBTQ activist organization recently claimed that right-wing content should be more strictly regulated on social media platforms because they are not “safe” for “LGBTQ users.” The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) says it seeks to “accelerate acceptance” of the “LGBTQ community” and has called on social media platforms to change algorithms to prevent amplifying “harmful content, extremism and hate.”
According to the Free Beacon, GLAAD has formal partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis singled out “right wing media and politicians” as risks necessitating content restriction. The organization encouraged social media firms to forbid users from using pre-transition names and biological pronouns to refer to transgender people.
The organization’s call for increased censorship came in its annual “Social Media Safety Index,” which claims to provide “recommendations for the industry at large and reports on LGBTQ user safety across the five major social media platforms.” The report explained that “While Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and other platforms must balance concerns around free expression, it cannot be stated strongly enough that social media platforms must take more meaningful and aggressive action to protect the safety of their LGBTQ users and to staunch the epidemic of hate, falsehoods, and extremism.”
Every social media site evaluated in the report had an “LGBTQ safety” score below 50 on a scale of 100. TikTok had the lowest rating and Instagram the highest. The option to allow users to list their pronouns on their profiles was one factor used to assess how safe it was for LGBT people. The group also claims that objections to administering hormone treatment and puberty blockers to children constitute “promotion of falsehoods” and “disinformation.” Additionally, they argue that artificial intelligence is biased against “LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities.”
Last month, psychologist Jordan Peterson was banned from Twitter for referring to transgender actress and activist Elliot Page by her old name, Ellen. Several other notable conservative accounts have been suspended for challenging gender orthodoxy. However, GLAAD believes that gay and transgender people are subjected to disproportionate social media censorship.
