Twitter has faced criticism for quietly removing specific protections for transgender people from its hateful conduct policy. The policy previously included a line stating that Twitter prohibits “targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or dead naming of transgender individuals.” However, this line was removed from the policy earlier this month, according to archived page versions from the Wayback Machine.
In addition to this, Twitter also removed a line from the policy that detailed certain groups of people who are often subject to extreme abuse online, including “women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, and marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.”
Twitter introduced its policy prohibiting misgendering and dead naming of transgender people in 2018 as part of a broader overhaul of its hateful conduct policy. The change to the evil conduct policy is one of several updates Twitter has made to its safety and content moderation practices since Elon Musk took over the company last fall. These updates include restoring the accounts of users who had previously been banned for violating its rules, stopping the enforcement of its Covid-19 misinformation policy, allowing users to purchase blue verification checkmarks, and applying controversial new labels to the accounts of several news organizations.
The LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD has called out Twitter for the removal of explicit protections for transgender people from its policy. In a statement released Tuesday, the organization expressed concern that the change could result in increased harassment and abuse of transgender people on the platform. Twitter has not yet commented on the criticism.
GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis criticized Twitter’s recent rollback of its policy that protected transgender people, calling it a move that makes the platform unsafe for users and advertisers. Ellis pointed out that other platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Meta maintain similar policies to protect transgender users. Twitter did not respond to requests for comment about the change. Still, the company did announce updates to enforcing its hateful conduct policy, including applying labels to some tweets that violate the policy and reducing their visibility. The platform also said it would not place ads next to content labeled as violative.
Elon Musk took over the company last fall and had been attempting to encourage advertisers to return to the platform after many paused their spending over concerns about his policy changes, increased hate speech on the forum, and massive workforce cuts. At a recent marketing conference, Musk sought to assure advertisers of Twitter’s approach to hateful conduct, saying, “If somebody has something hateful to say, it doesn’t mean you should give them a megaphone.”
Musk has faced criticism from the transgender community, including his transgender daughter, Vivian Jenny Wilson, who petitioned a California court to change her last name to that of her mother, Musk’s ex-wife. Musk has also made tweets mocking the idea of choosing pronouns and has had tweets in the past that have been perceived as transphobic. However, Musk has insisted that he has no problem with transgender people and has expressed frustration with using different pronouns. He also pointed out that his auto company, Tesla, scored 100% from the Human Rights Campaign for being one of the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality.”
