Did Elon Musk Go Back to Supporting Our Community on X?

Prior to April 8th, 2023, X (the artist formerly known as Twitter), contained protections listed under their hateful conduct policy that specifically included the trans community prohibiting: “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 last line was conveniently deleted without announcement on April 8th. We know that X has become a shit show of anti-LGBTQ language, even used by owner Elon Musk himself. The trans protection was first introduced in 2018 in response to a growing number of hate comments towards the community. Well, now, again, without fanfare, certain verbiage has been brought back.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Advocate (@theadvocatemag)

Many advertisers for X had left because they were worried about their branding and ads appearing next to hate speech. Wall Street reported that Musk stated at a marketing conference in Miami, “It’s totally cool to say that you want to have your advertising appear in certain places of Twitter and not in other places. But it is not cool to say what Twitter will do. And if that means losing advertising dollars, we’ll lose them. But freedom of speech is paramount.” Yeah, cool man. The WSJ further reported that Twitter had lost 30 of its top 100 advertisers, and 24 more had reduced spending dollars by 80%. It wasn't just about the anti-LGBTQ language, it also had to do with an increase in racist speech, going unaddressed by the social media platform.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by LGBTQ Nation (@lgbtqnation)

Ars Technica reported that non-profit Media Matters, in their research, reported a 1200% spike in reference to "groomers" which is the term that has been used on social media and in legislation as an attack on the LGBTQ community.

Ars Technica was also the first to catch and report that X had added back certain verbiage under its "Use of Prior Names and Pronouns" policy to "reduce the visibility of posts that purposefully use different pronouns to address someone other than what that person uses for themselves, or that use a previous name that someone no longer goes by as part of their transition."

Here's the catch, users who go against the policy will not be banned. Rather, the person receiving the hate speech or messages must report the violation and their comments will be hidden. This puts the responsibility and stress on the victim, not the abuser. Why can't we just go back to old Twitter?

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by NBC OUT (@nbcout)

In a report issued by GLAAD, they found that the only social media platform that specifically prohibits language regarding dead naming and misgendering is TikTok.

What say you? Is this a step in the right direction by Twitter, we mean X?