LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD has given several major social media platforms low marks for how they protect the safety, privacy and expression of the LGBTQ community online.
As part of the fourth annual Social media safety indexGLAAD examined hate, misinformation, prevalent anti-LGBTQ tropes, political best practices, suppression of LGBTQ content, artificial intelligence and data protection, regulation, and connections between “online hate and offline harm.”
The organization gave a failing rating to five of the six major social media platforms. Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter; YouTube; Facebook da Meta; Instagram; and Threads received a failing grade of F on the index scorecard for the third year in a row.
TikTok, an app that could eventually be banned in the United States, was the only major social platform not to receive an F rating, earning a D+ rating.
TikTok’s score improved from last year, GLAAD said, because the company made several improvements to its “Anti-Discrimination Ads Policy,” meaning advertisers cannot inappropriately target or exclude users from seeing content, among other things. other improvements.
The organization said it intends to analyze social media platforms and index them so that advocates can turn to leaders of social media companies that fail to make safe products for the LGBTQ community.
“When it comes to anti-LGBTQ hate and misinformation, the industry is dangerously lacking in enforcement of current policies,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD. said in a statement. “There is a direct relationship between online harm and the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ legislative attacks, rising rates of real-world anti-LGBTQ violence, and threats of violence, for which social media platforms are responsible and must act urgently to resolve.”
Threads received its first F rating since it launched in the summer of 2023. Meta’s other platforms, Facebook and Instagram, were the only other platforms to receive worse ratings than the previous year. Facebook is down 3 points and Instagram is down 5 points compared to 2023.
TikTok rose 10 points last year. YouTube increased by 4 points and X increased by 8 points.
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