Twitter slammed for rolling back policy protecting trans users

Jordan Hirst 19 April 2023

Images: US Government/Public Domain, Twitter

Elon Musk’s Twitter is under fire for quietly revising its “hateful conduct policy” to remove an important protection for its transgender users.

The social media site has changed the “hateful conduct” policy to remove a sentence explicitly prohibiting “targeted misgendering or deadnaming” of individuals, protecting the trans community.

Twitter put the policy in place in 2018. The hateful content policy earlier read, “We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanise, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.

“This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

Twitter quietly removed that last sentence a few weeks ago.

The platform’s report function still allows users to report a tweet for “misgendering or deadnaming” a person or people.

But this week, Twitter also separately announced it will now only slap a warning label on some tweets “potentially” in violation of its “hateful conduct” rules.

Previously, the social media platform removed them, the AP reported.

Read also: Hate speech floods Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover

LGBTQIA+ advocacy group GLAAD slammed Twitter for “covertly rolling back” the long-standing, trans-specific policy.

CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said it’s “the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike”.

“This decision to roll back LGBTQ+ safety pulls Twitter even more out of step with TikTok, Pinterest and Meta,” she said.

“[Those platforms] all maintain similar policies to protect their transgender users at a time when anti-transgender rhetoric online is leading to real world discrimination and violence.”

Approached for comment, Twitter has responded with a poo emoji, an automated reply it sends to media enquiries.