The non-governmental organization evaluates the safety of the largest social media for sexual minorities. The services offered by Meta were rated as the best, but there is still room for improvement.
Conspiracy theories spreading on social media raise suspicions towards minorities. Joona Rissanen
The largest social media services would have a lot to improve in the treatment of sexual minorities. The issue is revealed by the world’s largest non-governmental organization promoting the rights of sexual minorities In a report by GLAAD.
– In addition to social media, it would be of primary importance for the entire technology industry to have more precise practices regarding everyone’s safety. Not only regarding sexual minorities, the report stated.
The report evaluated the practices of the five largest social media on how sexual minorities and their rights are handled in their services.
The evaluated services were Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube and Twitter.
Instagram the best – Twitter the worst
The report evaluated 12 different points, how the services have taken into account the rights of sexual minorities. The items evaluated included whether the service recommends content based on this assumed gender, how hate speech is handled and how sexual minorities are taken into account in the work community.
A tech billionaire Elon Musk’s owned Twitter got a result of 33%, which dropped by 12% from last year’s report. As the most important remark, GLAAD stated that the service has removed the clause about sexual minorities from its pages.
Instagram and Facebook, owned by Meta, got the best results in the survey. However, they still have room for improvement. Instagram received 63% approval and Facebook 61% approval. Both services improved their results from last year by 15 percent.
GLAAD states that Meta still has room for improvement, for example in how the services recommend content to their users and how privacy is ensured in Meta’s services.
Tiktok’s result was 57% and Youtube’s 54%.
Conspiracy theories can lead to violence
Conspiracy theories and hate speech spreading on social media incite suspicion and, at worst, can even lead to violence against groups of people. This is one of the most important reasons why social media content control is important.
As one example of conspiracy theories, GLAAD raises the rumors that have spread in the public debate about how sexual minorities are a threat to the safety of children.
According to them, the conspiracy theory in question originates from the “Gays Against Groomers” community masquerading as a representative of the sexual minority, which has appeared a lot on various social media channels. In the content they have shared, they have claimed that there is a lot of child abuse in sexual minority jobs that should be addressed, as well as how drag performers are a danger to children.
– The community in question was founded to spread false information and incite hostility towards sexual minorities, GLAAD states in its report.
In reality, the community has been behind it An extremist group hostile to sexual minoritieswho has also been involved in the events of the Proud Boys extremist group.
The problem, however, is the financial benefit that social media receives from the spread of similar content through, among other things, advertisements. GLAAD states that one solution is to increase transparency in advertisements.