According to a report published by media advocacy organisation GLAAD, all top social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok are failing to protect their LGBTQ+ users and are “prioritising profit over LGBTQ safety and lives.”

GLAAD, the world’s largest queer media watchdog, published its annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI), a report that evaluates how safe the five major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok) are for their LGBTQ+ users.

This year’s report introduced the Platform Scorecard, developed in cooperation with Ranking Digital Rights and Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, which employs 12 indicators to generate ratings about LGBTQ+ safety, privacy and expression. It reviews the platforms on various measures, such as how they explicitly protect LGBTQ+ users from hate and harassment online, whether they offer gender pronoun options on profiles or if they ban discriminatory advertising.

According to the report’s results, all social media platforms scored less than 50 out of 100, thus confirming that they’re failing to ensure their LGBTQ+ users’ safety. Instagram got the highest score of 48%, while TikTok fell behind all the others with 43%.

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The report also identified a series of online trends such as the fact that anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric employed on social media translates to real-life harm towards queer folks. Moreover, viral misinformation has been identified as the main driver of the majority of the nearly 250 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the US this year.

“Today’s political and cultural landscapes demonstrate the real-life harmful effects of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and misinformation online,” commented GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis. “The hate and harassment, as well as misinformation and flat-out lies about LGBTQ people, that go viral on social media are creating real-world dangers, from legislation that harms our community to the recent threats of violence at Pride gatherings.”

“Social media platforms are active participants in the rise of anti-LGBTQ cultural climate and their only response should be to urgently create safer products and policies, and then enforce those policies,” Ellis concluded.

This is a must-read thread on the new GLAAD Social Media Safety Index from SMSI advisory committee member Evan Greer. https://t.co/NWc10Xct6c

— GLAAD (@glaad) July 14, 2022

The Social Media Safety Index also proposed some recommendations on how to improve the situation for LGBTQ+ folks on social media. Changing the design of the algorithm to prevent it from circulating and amplifying harmful content and extremism is the first necessary step. Moreover, moderators should be trained to understand the needs of LGBTQ+ users and to act accordingly.

Platforms should also prohibit actions such as the promotion of conversion therapy or targeted misgendering and deadnaming, an action that TikTok took in February of this year.

GLAAD’s Senior Director of Social Media Safety, Jenni Olson, praised the move saying: “All platforms should follow the lead of TikTok and Twitter and should immediately incorporate an explicit prohibition against targeted misgendering and deadnaming of transgender and non-binary people into hateful conduct policies.”

“This recommendation remains an especially high priority in our current landscape where anti-trans rhetoric and attacks are so prevalent, vicious, and harmful. We also urge these companies to effectively moderate such content and to enforce these policies,” Olson concluded.