(Newswire.net — October 1, 2022) — This past July, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) released its second annual Social Media Safety Index Platform Scorecard, using 12 LGBTQIA+-specific indicators to generate numeric ratings for safety, privacy, and expression. Each of the five social media platforms it analyzed received a failing grade. Considering that nearly half of LGBTQIA+ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, according to the Trevor Project, community leaders and allies are calling the state of social media dangerous and unacceptable.
“Hate speech on social media that involves any underrepresented group is obviously not acceptable,” according to Wynne Nowland, a trans woman, CEO, and activist for trans rights. “For some reason, while much progress has been made in recent years with tolerance and inclusion, there is definitely a lag with respect to LGBTQIA+ — and particularly trans people.”
Wynne, a prominent financial industry executive, columnist, and public speaker points out that things that would never be tolerated being said against a person based on their race or ethnicity are routinely tolerated when it comes to making disparaging comments about trans people. So far, a patchwork of state laws has been passed, with California the latest to enshrine anti-hate and anti-disinformation principles into law.
These laws, however, have been plagued by lawsuits and confusion. Given the stakes, Wynne wonders why there is not yet federal legislation. “The detrimental effects are obvious,” she says, calling out much of the anti-trans content as “dehumanizing.”
The statistics from GLAAD’s recent scorecard indeed paint a dire picture. Dozens of transgender and gender non-conforming people have already been killed this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, which tracks hate crimes against the LGBTQIA+ community. Although social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook now employ thousands of monitors to weed out harmful content and fact-check political statements, Nowland says that social media giants remain largely ignorant of how hateful rhetoric has historically led directly to “herd mentality-type consequences.”
“It is incomprehensible to me that behavior against trans people is passively condoned by not accurately monitoring and reporting these kinds of offensive posts,” she says. “Violence against trans people is still rampant, and far higher than against almost any other group proportion-wise.” She adds that social media networks — including China-owned TikTok, which is now the most popular platform in the United States — are “absolutely responsible” for not monitoring and shutting down hate rhetoric, no matter how nuanced.
Ironically, perhaps, a perception that social media companies like Facebook have gone too far in restricting the sharing of political content has led to non-monitored networks like Truth Social and Parler, both of which have been associated with former president Donald Trump. But Nowland believes focusing on one group’s right to free speech, rather than another group’s right to exist, is simply misdirection.
“Admittedly, there is a fine line between allowing free speech and an honest exchange of viewpoints in a debate of topics facing society,” she observes. “But at the same time, most reasonable people can identify harmful rhetoric compared to a genuine discussion, or even disagreement. The platforms should monitor posts and comments and content accordingly. One of the ways to measure the health of a society is by how it treats its most vulnerable, and, as the GLAAD scorecard shows, social media is failing miserably.”