Twitter quietly altered its hateful conduct policy to remove long-standing protections for transgender users, including prohibiting “misgendering or deadnaming”

Twitter has quietly altered its Hateful Conduct Policy to remove long-standing protections for its transgender users …

The Verge 2023-04-19

Context & Ripple Effects

Twitter’s earlier moderation arc was toward broader protected-category coverage: it began enforcing violence and hateful-conduct rules in 2017 and later added dehumanizing language based on age, disability, or disease to its prohibited conduct.

This change reverses that direction for a defined set of transgender-user protections. It also contrasts with TikTok’s LGBTQ safety-policy update, which explicitly included a ban on misgendering.

First-order effects

Transgender users lose an explicit policy basis for reporting misgendering and deadnaming as hateful conduct on Twitter.
Twitter’s moderation team and enforcement systems no longer need to treat those behaviors as violations under the removed language.

Second-order effects

Platforms with explicit LGBTQ-safety rules gain a clearer policy distinction from Twitter, while users and advocacy groups have less common ground for comparing enforcement outcomes across services.
The removal makes Twitter’s remaining hateful-conduct rules more consequential: complaints involving transgender users must now be assessed under narrower or different policy categories, where applicable.

Third-order effects

If major platforms continue to diverge on protected-group rules, content moderation becomes a more visible form of product and governance differentiation rather than a converging industry baseline.
The shift underscores that platform gatekeeping is contestable: policy language, enforcement scope, and user recourse can change without a new technical capability.

The trend: This is one data point in the fragmentation of social-platform safety standards, as companies redefine which harms receive explicit policy protection.

Discussion

@glaad @glaad on x
NEW: @Twitter has quietly removed a section of its hateful conduct policy that aimed to protect transgender people from targeted misgendering and deadnaming. https://www.glaad.org/...
@sarahkateellis Sarah Kate Ellis on x
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 trans users at a time when anti-transgender rhetoric online is leading to real world discrimination and violence.
@0xabad1dea @0xabad1dea on x
Elon Musk, a man who has publicly stated it's not his fault that his transgender daughter legally disowned him, has removed the clause against “targeted misgendering or deadnaming” from the twitter harassment policy https://www.theverge.com/...
@marzgurl Kaylyn Saucedo on x
The policy was frequently abused by people who figured out tricks to get each other banned if you so much as used any pronoun at anybody. But I still would have preferred it in place, just improved. So now rather than getting it improved, it's just gone entirely, helping nobody. …
@tusk81 @tusk81 on x
“A February 2023 poll of LGBTQ Twitter users from Amnesty International USA, GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign found 60% of survey respondents experienced an increase in abusive and hateful speech on Twitter since Elon Musk took over as CEO.” https://twitter.com/...
@kelleyjrobinson Kelley Robinson on x
It's despicable that Twitter has turned its head on the trans community and quietly rolled back this policy, at such a critical time for our community. https://twitter.com/...
@adl @adl on x
.@Twitter's policies must aim to keep the platform safe for its users. This decision will have harmful consequences beyond the platform, as we've seen online anti-LGBTQ+ hate fuel offline violence. https://twitter.com/...
@voxandra @voxandra on x
I still think it's incredibly embarrassing to be paying for this website, and even more embarrassing to defend it. https://twitter.com/...
@hrc @hrc on x
This policy change makes Twitter more unsafe for trans and non-binary users and paves the way for outright discrimination. Twitter has an obligation to protect people on the platform, not expose them to hate and vitriol. https://twitter.com/...
@lasciviousfox @lasciviousfox on x
Knew this was coming. Twitter's rolling back protections against hate speech. https://twitter.com/...
@beingjarley @beingjarley on x
Twitter removes protections for trans folk whilst trans folk buy Twitter Blue. You're enabling this. I'm out. Find me on Insta (same username) or message me for offline contact details. It's been a ride. Thanks for the memories and the besties. ✌🏻 https://www.theverge.com/...
@jbenton Joshua Benton on x
No real way to misinterpret the intent on this one https://www.glaad.org/... https://twitter.com/...
@benjaminjs Benjamin Siemon on x
Elon Musk is a human pile of garbage. https://twitter.com/...
@linzsports Lindsay Gibbs on x
God this is so awful. https://twitter.com/...
@freepress @freepress on x
Musk promised brands that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape.” Turns out, he lied. @glaad with important updates to Twitter's hateful conduct policy. Every decision Musk makes is bad for free speech, safety, business. #StopToxicTwitter https://twitter.com/...
@racheline_m @racheline_m on x
I mean the user experience has made that pretty obvious but: https://twitter.com/...
@sarahkateellis Sarah Kate Ellis on x
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. https://twitter.com/...
@thetonymorrison Tony Morrison on x
BREAKING: Twitter has quietly, covertly, removed its longstanding policy that protected transgender people from targeted misgendering & deadnaming. More here 👇🏽 https://www.glaad.org/...
Twitter Twitter on x
Freedom of Speech, Not Reach: An update on our enforcement philosophy
@twittersafety @twittersafety on x
We're adding more transparency to the enforcement actions we take on Tweets. As a first step, soon you'll start to see labels on some Tweets identified as potentially violating our rules around Hateful Conduct letting you know that we've limited their visibility. 🧵... https://twi…
@twittersafety @twittersafety on x
These actions will be taken at a tweet level only and will not affect a user's account. Restricting the reach of Tweets helps reduce binary “leave up versus take down” content moderation decisions and supports our freedom of speech vs freedom of reach approach.
@chetfaliszek @chetfaliszek on x
Musk changed the CBC label to... 69. Get it?!?? like OMG! THAT IS HILARIOUS The frog boils slowly for a reason. This is the behavior of an abusive, petty, child and y'all accept openly attacking and belittling a news agency like this. For Tesla bros... 420!! Woo! Get it?!? https:…
@digitaldutta Srinivas Kodali on x
Twitter cracking down on virality of hate speech and fake news could be good. Except they have been known to ignore them in countries outside US. https://blog.twitter.com/...
@eddie1perez Edward Perez on x
Twitter's so-called “new” policy to moderate the reach of tweets that may violate the rules is not all that diff from what Twitter was doing anyway. Most impt? Musk needs to check himself. I spoke with @stokel for @FastCompany. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@tomfitton Tom Fitton on x
.@Twitter still figuring out ways to censor and suppress speech? https://twitter.com/...
@atomicanalyst Stephen Schwartz on x
Contrast this hedged announcement with how Twitter used to handle hate speech (before most of its staff members were fired or quit in protest), or the swift, clear, and decisive action Spoutible just took to address the same problem: https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/..…
@frances_coppola Frances ‘Cassandra’ Coppola on x
Shadowbanning goes official. https://twitter.com/...
@tweetsbyparker Parker Lyons on x
you mean sh-sh-sh-shadowbanning?! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@minds @minds on x
There's a huge difference between freedom of reach to non-followers vs. freedom of reach to your existing followers. https://twitter.com/...
@stillgray Ian Miles Cheong on x
Twitter isn't shadowbanning with the new policy. It's limiting the reach of specific tweets and not entire accounts and it lets everyone know that the tweets are being limited. Ben is just being dishonest here. https://twitter.com/...
@geoffreyfowler Geoffrey A. Fowler on x
Twitter starting to address the real concerns about Shadowbanning. As I wrote recently @washingtonpost, nearly 1 in 10 Americans on social media suspect they've been shadowbanned. And there are some good ideas about how to deal with it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... https:/…
@neontaster Noam Blum on x
It's not shadow anything if they're open about it. https://twitter.com/...
@rothschildmd Mike Rothschild on x
Elon Musk just discovered shadowbanning, and is apparently a fan. https://twitter.com/...
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
I remember when this was called Shadowbanning and was the world's biggest First Amendment violation. Guess things are different now for some reason. https://twitter.com/...
@mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x
Where's Matt Taibbi when you need him? https://twitter.com/...
@eve6 @eve6 on x
Wow he invented shadowbanning https://twitter.com/...
@kennethrwebster Kenny Webster on x
Can't wait to find out which of my tweets are too hateful for public consumption https://twitter.com/...
@jmelei Jeff Melei on x
This important update doubles down on our commitment to transparency. If your Tweet is filtered, there will be no doubt. Freedom of Speech, Not Reach: An update on our enforcement philosophy https://blog.twitter.com/...
@imincorrigible @imincorrigible on x
It doesn't take a genius to be able to predict that these labels will be seen by the far right as badges of honour. If tweets are “hateful” they should be removed - this stuff should not be difficult. https://twitter.com/...
@jeffbrutlag @jeffbrutlag on x
Translation, “we won't let hateful tweets go viral but we'll still allow them to exist” This platform continues to be driven into the ground, because the CEO has no idea how to run a social media site https://twitter.com/...
@rmac18 Ryan Mac on x
It's interesting watching Musk and the people he's brought in learn content moderation in real time. This approach of labels and limiting reach on tweets that potentially violated the company's policies existed in Twitter 1.0. https://twitter.com/...

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