Twitter has quietly dropped a long-standing policy put in place to specifically protect transgender and nonbinary users — and responded to a request for comment in a colorful way.
The move was first reported by LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD on Tuesday, calling it the “latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike.”
When the Daily News reached out to the company for comment, Twitter responded within seconds — with a poop emoji.
The troubled social media platform, which was acquired by Elon Musk in October of last year, officially prohibited the misgendering or deadnaming of transgender users in November 2018.
“Deadnaming,” defined as the practice of using a trans person’s birth name without that person’s permission, is considered a form of hate speech by the Anti-Defamation League.
“We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” the company’s hateful content policy stated.
That last sentence, which was live on the site as late as April 7, is no longer included on the microblogging site’s page on hateful content, according to screenshots captured by the Wayback Machine, a digital archive of the web pages.
The change in policy, which was carried out without attracting any attention, was first noticed by GLAAD.
“Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the organization’s president and CEO, said in a statement shared with the Daily News.
“This decision to roll back LGBTQ safety pulls Twitter even more out of step with TikTok, Pinterest, and Meta, which 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,” she added.
Earlier this year, TikTok updated its community guidelines to expressly prohibit misogyny, misgendering and deadnaming.
Last summer, after evaluating all major social media platforms on 12 LGBTQ-specific indicators — including policies on misgendering or deadnaming, actions to restrict harmful content, and a commitment to protect LGBTQ users from harm — GLAAD found that all five of them received scores under 50, out of a possible 100.
Twitter’s social media safety index score was 45. When reached for comment by the New York Daily News, a company spokesperson responded in non-emoji form.
“At Twitter, we know the public conversation only reaches its full potential when every community feels safe and comfortable participating,” the spokesperson said at the time.
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