Social media platforms failing to stop LGBTQ+ hate
17.08.2022 - 14:15
/ mambaonline.com
Twitter and Facebook are failing to enforce their own guidelines and have allowed a surge in LGBTQ+ hate on their platforms.
That’s according to the Digital Hate report, published by The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in collaboration with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). It looked at the “wave of online extremist anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric” triggered by the recent passage of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ Bill.
The bill, which was signed into law by the US state’s Governor Ron DeSantis in March, bans discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in primary schools.
The report found that in the month after the bill was passed, the average number of tweets per day using slurs such as “groomer” and “pedophile” in relation to LGBTQ+ people jumped by 406%.
The CCDH estimates that the 500 most-viewed tweets that advance the false “child groomer” narrative have been viewed at least 72 million times between January and July 2022.
Although these slurs violated Twitter’s ‘Hateful Conduct’ policy – which prohibits attacks or threats against people based on their sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity – Twitter failed to act on 99 of 100 of the highest-reach hateful tweets identified in the report, even after researchers anonymously reported them.
Just 10 people drove 66% of impressions for the 500 most viewed hateful ‘grooming’ tweets. Among this ‘Top Ten’ were politicians Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, Christina Pushaw, Press Secretary to Governor Ron DeSantis, and Chaya Raicheck, who founded the pro-Trump Libs of Tik Tok account.
“Facebook and Twitter claim in their rules to prohibit this kind of targeted hate and harassment but they simply don’t enforce those rules on bad actors – rules