Trans people could be able to update their email address with their new name under an upcoming Gmail update.
The world’s largest email provider is reportedly rolling out a new function which will allow users to update their “gmail.com” addresses.
The email service, operated by Google, currently forbids users with a Gmail handle from changing their email address.
However, according to the blog 9 to 5 Google, an updated section to its support page suggests developers are “gradually rolling out” a change which will allow addresses to be changes.
The new section, which is currently only present on Google’s Hindi support pages, reads: “If you’d like, you can change your Google Account email address that ends in gmail.com to a new email address that ends in gmail.com.”
When users change their email address, the old handle will reportedly become an ‘alias’ address, meaning that emails sent to the old address will automatically forward to the new one.
Google notes that users who change their address will be unable to create a new email address for 12 months and will be unable to delete the new handle.
If fully implemented, the change could allow trans users to remove their deadname – a name commonly given to them at birth which may not match their correct gender identity – from their email address without having to create a completely new account.
While Gmail currently allows users to change their display name on emails, the current inability to change the actual email handle to remove a user’s deadname is a common problem among people in the community.
One individual complained about the restriction in a post on Reddit, saying they were reluctant to make a new account given how much they have stored on Google’s services such as Google Drive or Google Contacts.
“I think I’d rather not have any trace of my deadname publicly visible, but I’m not sure if I should get rid of my whole account or just try to hide it behind a proxy email,” they wrote.
Members of the Google Pixel Hub Telegram group commended the change, with one user writing it would be “huge if true.”
“Many of us have had Gmail since the beginning when we didn’t know it would matter this much,” they wrote. “Many others got their accounts as kids under the same lack of realisation, and some people have changed their names.”
While the changes aren’t fully live yet, 9 to 5 Google noted that news on the update came earlier than expected.
An internet privacy group is accusing TikTok of violating international law by tracking its users’ Grindr data.
European digital rights group NOYB filed a complaint against the social media platform, as well as Grindr and digital marketing company AppsFlyer, over claims they breached online privacy laws by tracking user’s inter-app activities.
The Austria-based organisation alleged to the country’s Data Protection Authority on Wednesday (16 December) that TikTok was violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and risked exposing its customer’s sensitive data.
It claimed TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, and Grindr shared sensitive user data, which AppsFlyer allegedly facilitated.
NOYB told Reuters it was informed by an anonymous user that TikTok was accessing their sensitive details from other apps, including their usage of Grindr and LinkedIn, as well as products they had added to a shopping cart.
Grindr has over 14 million monthly active users. (Getty)
TikTok allegedly only told the user that their personal information had been accessed after repeated attempts to inquire about their user data.
Under GDPR’s laws on the right to be informed, organisations must be transparent about how they use an individual’s personal data, typically through a privacy notice. Failing to disclose how a person’s data is used would breach GDPR.
Breaching GDPR can cost companies anywhere from €10 million (£8,700,000) or 3 per cent of their global income, to €20 million (£17,500,000) or 4 per cent of their annual global income.
The breach could also violate GDPR laws on special categories, which protects highly sensitive information such as a person’s race, physical or mental health, religion, sexuality, or gender identity.
NOYB claimed a spokesperson for TikTok said the data was used for “personalised advertising, analytics, security” reasons.
Both the social media company and Grindr have been fined by government authorities over data breaches in the past.
In 2024, Grindr faced mass lawsuits after allegedly sharing users’ personal information, including their HIV status and ethnicity, with a variety of third parties.
Law firm Austen Hays, acting on behalf of the plaintiffs, told the BBC at the time that “thousands” of users in the UK and beyond were likely victims of the alleged actions.
Lawyer Chaya Hanoomanjee said claimants had experienced “significant distress” over the possibility that their private information had been shared with advertisers and other groups.
A spokesperson for the app said it takes privacy “extremely seriously”, claiming the allegations were based on a “mischaracterisation of practices from more than four years ago”.
In violation of the ACA preventive services coverage requirement, Delta Air Lines, which has 100,000 employees in the United States, is only covering daily oral generic PrEP to prevent HIV without prior authorization. Contrary to the ACA, it is refusing to cover the full array of PrEP drugs specifically required by the United States Preventative Services Task Force (“UPSTF”) without access restrictions in its employee health plan.
In recent months, the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute has reached out to Delta officials after employees received notice that Delta would no longer cover a branded oral PrEP drug. Delta’s Chief Health and Wellness Officer responded initially that the notices were “sent inadvertently” and Delta would “cover all three formulations of PrEP without cost-sharing subject to the terms and conditions of the plans.” However, since then, employees have received new notices that only generic PrEP would be covered without prior authorization. In response, we sent a second letter and this time Delta’s lawyers responded by simply arguing, without explanation, that they are in compliance with the ACA and its implementing regulations.
“We are extremely disappointed in Delta Air Lines, which has a substantial employee base who can benefit from PrEP, for failing to comply with the ACA’s preventive services requirements,” commented Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. “The law, along with its implementing regulations, is very clear: health plans must cover all forms of PrEP recommended by the USPSTF without cost-sharing and not restrict access using prior authorizations to favor one form of PrEP recommended by the USPSTF over others. By only favoring generic PrEP, Delta is clearly violating the law.”
The current federal PrEP guidance to insurers specifically requires coverage of effective PrEP agents, including the once every two-months long-acting PrEP drug (Apretude) and another oral brand name PrEP drug (Descovy). It was issued prior to FDA approval of the newest form of long-acting PrEP (Yeztugo), but the recommendation speaks specifically to any “effective” PrEP medication.
Delta has said it will only cover the new twice-yearly PrEP drug after the USPSTF reviews it, notwithstanding the fact that the USPSTF has already issued a Grade “A” recommendation for any “effective” PrEP medication. Not covering Yeztugo also violates a number of state laws.
“Delta has a large employee base in Atlanta, a city with one of the highest number of HIV cases in the country that primarily is impacting the Black community. As a corporate citizen, Delta has an obligation and duty to protect its employees against HIV,” said Dr. Daniel Driffin, an Atlanta public health activist. “Failing to cover long-acting PrEP and requiring people to jump through prior authorization hoops so they can protect themselves against HIV will lead to increased HIV. Delta, along with other employers, should be doing everything possible to prevent HIV.”
We are receiving reports from PrEP providers in Atlanta and elsewhere that Delta employees who were using PrEP are not taking their drugs and falling out of care. Due to the nature of their work and travel schedules, airline employees are perfect candidates for long-acting PrEP, but Delta is not offering it.
“We call on Delta to reassess their PrEP coverage, which not only impacts employees and their family members in Atlanta but throughout the country and across the globe,” added Schmid. He concluded, “We also call on the U.S Department of Labor to investigate this situation and enforce the regulations that it issued to ensure all employers, including Delta, are in compliance with the law.”
The same-sex dating and social apps Blued and Finka suddenly became unavailable to download on iOS devices over the weekend, while users of Android devices can still download them from their official websites.
Apple said the removal was “based on an order” from the Cyberspace Administration of China but didn’t elaborate on what the order was about.
“We follow the laws in the countries where we operate,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to The Associated Press.
A “lite” version of the Blued app is available on Chinese app stores on both Apple and Android devices as of Tuesday, NBC News found.
BlueCity, a Beijing-based tech company that owns both Blued and Finka, didn’t announce why its apps were pulled from Apple’s app store in China. Blued has about 56 million registered users, according to OctoPlus Media, a marketing agency in Hong Kong.
BlueCity, Apple and the Chinese Cyberspace Administration did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
The removal has raised concerns among LGBTQ people in China, who have been facing a lack of legal protection and shrinking public spaces in recent years, including closures of major LGBTQ advocacy groups.
“We’re like a frog being boiled in warm water,” one user wrote Monday on RedNote, China’s Instagram-like platform. “Eventually, it will make gay people feel like secrecy is the norm.”
Gay dating apps have been “crucial” for queer men in China, a relatively conservative society, to “find community, a sense of belonging, and build relationships,” said Sam Chan, a digital cultures lecturer at the University of Sydney.
While digitally savvy gay people can turn to other online platforms, the removal of Blued and Finka has “undoubtedly taken away the most accessible and direct means of connection,” Chan told NBC News on Wednesday in an email.
The change reflects a “less tolerant stance by the state,” Chan said, noting that many queer men in China see gay dating apps as hope for “greater visibility and acceptance of the queer community someday.”
“Now, with these apps gone, that hope has been significantly diminished,” he said.
China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 and delisted it as a mental disorder in 2001, but same-sex marriage is not legal and there is limited official recognition of gay relationships.
Homosexuality has become one of the biggest subjects of censorship in China and the target of a recent government crackdown, even though surveys show the public is increasingly supportive of LGBTQ people.
In September, the U.S. movie “Together” that featured a same-sex wedding scene was digitally altered to turn one of the two men into a woman for early screenings in mainland China.
Elon Musk, CEO of the social media platform X, ex-Trump confidant, and founder of xAI, announced the launch of “Grokipedia” version 0.1 this week. The supposed competitor to the long-standing nonprofit website Wikipedia is AI-generated, and users have already flagged multiple pages that push far-right myths, including anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation.
“Wikipedia’s knowledge is – and always will be – human,” a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, told The Verge. “Through open collaboration and consensus, people from all backgrounds build a neutral, living record of human understanding – one that reflects our diversity and collective curiosity. This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
Originally announced in September, Musk touted Grokipedia as a “massive improvement over Wikipedia” and “a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.” However, the claim that it is an improvement over Wikipedia has been called into question because many of Grokipedia’s pages appear to be copied and pasted from Wikipedia itself.
The Grokipedia page for “cake” is identical to Wikipedia’s own page, except for formatting. At the end of Grokipedia’s page, there is a disclaimer stating that “The content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.”
The pages where that Wikipedia disclaimer appears to be missing and where the most new content can be found are those related to Elon Musk, his businesses, and the political issues currently discussed. That might explain a post from last week in which Musk said they were delaying the Grokipedia v0.1 launch so they could “purge out the propaganda.”
Grokipedia’s page on “Transgender” includes a section titled “Human Sexual Dimorphism and Immutability,” which defines gender entirely through a body’s ability to create either sperm or eggs and by using oversimplified biology around XX and XY chromosomes. It also claims that these identities are immutable, leaving no room for the many forms of gender and sex diversity, including intersex people. Much of this is directly in line with the president’s executive order on gender, which claimed there were only two sexes.
Grokipedia’s “Transgender Health Care” page (which you are directed to if you search for “gender-affirming care”) includes a proliferation of debunked “rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)” theories, as well as inaccurate claims that trans identities often emerge “following social contagion,” which is “preceded by mental health deterioration in 57% of instances.” Pages on trans issues, including one pushing false claims around “detransition,” regularly cite statistics that are not supported by the studies they link to, or cite studies that use reasonable sample groups.
The page for the Stonewall Riots plays down the significance of the events at the Stonewall Inn that were pivotal to the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. Meanwhile, it highlights the mafia’s ownership of the establishment in a way clearly intended to draw false connections: “The mafia’s exploitative role underscores that the venue was no bastion of community purity but a profit-driven enterprise amid broader criminal control of gay nightlife.”
Grokipedia also spreads disinformation about HIV, including a page entitled “HIV/AIDS skepticism” that says that there’s a “scientific critique” of the idea that HIV causes AIDS. Wikipedia’s equivalent page is entitled “HIV/AIDS denialism,” and it correctly states that it is a “belief, despite evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).”
In other instances, Grokipedia’s coverage of a topic tends to present issues in a light clearly intended to provide political bias. A page on the White House’s East Wing is keen to highlight support for the destruction and suggest that there has been no disruption caused by it.
Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb refused to wear a rainbow armband during a game, Olympian Mollie O’Callaghan pledged to no longer compete if trans swimmer Lia Thomas is allowed to, and singer Sam Smith took issue with conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel, as two individuals, using they/them pronouns.
You might have seen these divisive posts on Facebook, you might even have been outraged by them or shared them, but they’re not real – they are anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation falsely framed as legitimate news content.
You only need to make a cursory Google search to see the claims can be easily disproven.
Sports editor David Evans, writing for Sportscasting, concluded the story about Lamb was fabricated because there is absolutely no source for his alleged quote nor did any reputable sports outlet run coverage on it.
Swimming Australia swiftly issued a public statement declaring the comments attributed to O’Callaghan, and subsequently fellow swimmer Kyle Chalmers, were fake.
Sam Smith has been the subject of online misinformation, claiming they are semibisexual. (Didier Messens/Getty)
As important as it is for those impacted by fabricated content to clarify when a piece of information is absolutely not real, the simple fact is that the truth alone is not enough to rectify the power of fake news in this predominantly digital-first era we live in.
At a time when social media fact-checking and moderation is in decline, algorithmic rules govern our social media feeds – often reinforcing our own unconscious biases and echo chambers – and the lines between reality and fantasy are increasingly being blurred by AI, it is more and more difficult for many people to consistently tell fact from fiction.
A user who viewed such fake anti-LGBTQ+ posts as referenced earlier and instantly believes it to be true, perhaps because of their own prejudices and/or lack of skills at verifying the validity of media, would be unlikely to purposefully seek out any fact-checking. They would not think they need to – they saw it on Facebook, you see, so it must be true.
A more discerning user, however, might instantly be able to tell the post is nothing more than clickbait and/or engagement farming, or at the very least it is misleading and perhaps twisting someone’s original words.
Indeed, there are large swathes of the population who believe they are good at spotting fake news but studies frequently find they are often overconfident and still extremely susceptible to it.
They, as much as those who come to their social media feeds with already prejudiced opinions towards LGBTQ+ folks, are being targeted by bad actors seeking to weaponise anti-LGBTQ+ content to sow division in society.
These bad actors create content with the purpose of reaching average people in a society, honing in on their fears and anxieties about the state and future of their community, outraging them and, ultimately, shifting their opinions on queer rights, legislation enacted by their government, the trustworthiness of their elected leaders and undercutting democracy as a whole.
Misinformation and disinformation – two distinctly different but intertwined concepts – are certainly nothing new and have been a part of the media ecosystem as long as verifiable news has been.
While misinformation refers to the spread of falsehoods via genuine misunderstanding or mistake, disinformation is far more sinister and instead refers to the process by which entirely false information is created, propagated and disseminated on purpose, with the aim of pushing a particular narrative or agenda to achieve a set of political goals.
Anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation, on the other hand, includes the far-right “groomer”conspiracy theory which inherently links LGBTQ+ people to vile child abuse, claims pushed by Donald Trump that school teachers are performing gender-affirming surgeries on pupils in classrooms, and the recent posts above falsely attributed to notable athletes and other famous names.
In recent months, there has been an increasing number of posts appearing on social media – namely Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram – which are stylised to look like the image-based breaking news posts often used by media organisations, despite the fact they are being posted by the furthest thing from a news source.
The posts are usually overlaid with a quote or headline and captioned with some sort of breaking news kicker and the start of what looks like copy for a published news story.
In many cases, the same post – using the same image and caption – is shared across various different pages for maximum reach.
Many of the posts consistently appear to be about trans rights, namely the hot button issue of trans inclusion in sports or specific gender identities, with many referencing trans American swimmer Lia Thomas.
In 2022, Thomas made history as the first trans woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championship. She has since become a key figure in the right’s war against trans athletes.
PinkNews was unable to verify who was behind the Facebook pages which are sharing the current wave of anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation.
Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference
However, similar tactics have been used by bad actors in the past and in national security circles as Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), which the EU defines as a “pattern of behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes” wherein such activity “often seeks to stoke polarisation and divisions inside and outside the EU while also aiming to undermine the EU’s global standing and ability to pursue its policy objectives and interests”.
The report found that anti-LGBTQ+ FIMI is politically motivated and seeks to harden public opinion in opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, along with sowing divisions in communities and undermining democracy.
“The reach of FIMI cases targeting LGBTIQ+ goes beyond this community,” the report reads. “According to the evidence collected during the investigation, FIMI actors aimed to provoke public outrage not only against named LGBTIQ+ individuals, communities, or organisations – but also against government policies, the concept of democracy as such, and local or geopolitical events.
“While undermining LGBTIQ+ people was a common theme in many of the FIMI cases identified, the overarching narrative in many of them was that the West is in decline.
“By leveraging the narrative of decline, FIMI threat actors attempt to drive a wedge between traditional values and democracies.
“They claim that children need to be protected from LGBTIQ+ people, that LGBTIQ+ people get preferential treatment in sports and other fields – to the detriment of others – and that Western liberal organisations or political groups are demonstrably weak because they surrender to “LGBTIQ+ propaganda”.”
Fake content “keeps debates falsely alive”
Speaking to PinkNews, Dr Dani Madrid-Morales – lecturer in journalism and global communication at the University of Sheffield and co-Lead of the university’s Disinformation Research Cluster, said the style of anti-LGBTQ+ posts currently being shared on Facebook are “a very common approach that different actors use”.
Madrid-Morales noted that whilst political actors certainly use these coordinated strategies for a particular end goal, they are also used by isolated individuals who “benefit economically from creating this content that is highly polarizing [and] that’s likely to get a lot of engagement”.
He went on to explain that the content, of course, has a negative impact on the community it is focused on directly but “more broadly, it sort of keeps these debates sometimes falsely alive in the sense that in the political arena”.
“By keeping these debates really highly active on social media, certain groups benefit from being able to say, ‘oh, look, people are really interested in us talking about this’, because a lot of people on social media are discussing these topics and sometimes it’s very artificially inflated.
“We’ve seen that before with other topics, for example health disinformation and anti-vax campaigners, where they create false information.
“They use amplification techniques on social media to get that widely spread, and then they create the false illusion that’s a topic that people are really concerned about when in reality it’s not.”
A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests. Robby Starbuck, 36, of Nashville, was appointed in August as an adviser by Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other tech platforms – in an August lawsuit settlement.
Since his appointment, Starbuck has baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders.
Starbuck has long pushed vaccine disinformation, and he has amplified false claims made by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. As part of his anti-DEI push, Starbuck has also spread overheated claims and falsehoods about transgender and LGBTQ people. Starbuck also baselessly asserted that city officials in Portland were working with anti-fascists, and appeared to urge a violent response.
Read the full article. Starbuck has appeared here many times for leading boycotts and threat campaigns against major corporations for their pro-LGBTQ policies. In most cases, the targeted companies rolled back such policies or ended them entirely. Hit the link for much more. No paywall.
Robby Starbuck has built his reputation by attacking LGBTQ inclusion. He’s created a documentary called “The War on Children,” where he promotes the debunked conspiracy theory that suggests pesticides are turning your kids gay. He’s argued that Democrats are pro-trans because they want to allow men to follow women and girls in bathrooms. And he’s said that it’s “grooming for adults to have kids carry trans flags at a soccer game.”
But in the last year, Starbuck has become notorious as a key face of America’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, leading boycott campaigns on social media. He’s successfully pressured corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson, to cut down on their DEI programs and withdraw support for Pride events.
Despite having no background in artificial intelligence or content policy, Starbuck has now been brought in by Meta as an AI consultant. To resolve a defamation lawsuit made public in August, the company agreed to bring on the right-wing influencer to advise its AI systems on “political bias” and to reduce the risk of misinformation generated by its chatbot, which was the basis of the lawsuit.
“Meta and Robby Starbuck will work collaboratively in the coming months to continue to find ways to address issues of ideological and political bias,” Starbuck and Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan shared in a joint statement.
This move signaled an alarming retreat from the company’s previous effortsto protect queer voices and also signaled a legitimization of narratives that have long sought to erase them.
And it wasn’t an isolated move. It was part of a systematic dismantling of digital civil-rights protections, with consequences that extend far beyond our screens.
Hate Speech Overhaul
In January, Meta—which has a net worth of nearly $1.8 trillion—overhauled its hate-speech policies, allowing language once flagged as harmful to be tolerated under the guise of protecting “discourse.”
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality,” the revised policy guidelines outlined.
This move doesn’t expand free expression; it legitimizes dehumanization. When platforms allow harmful language to flourish under the banner of neutrality or so-called viewpoint diversity, they create environments where targeted marginalized groups are bullied and silenced online. And it may already be happening: Human rights organizations warn that this shift has opened the door to allowing rhetoric portraying LGBTQ people as “abnormal” or “mentally ill.”
And after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, transphobia proliferated, with one user writing in the immediate aftermath: “If the first suspect isn’t a democratic lgbtq trans/fag then you’re looking in the wrong spot. Wow I despise that group of humans.”
As a tech founder who has built companies that bring people together online while ensuring those spaces remain safe and welcoming, I understand where priorities should lie when it comes to the user experience. I’m also aware that that experience can become dangerous for users if companies don’t feel like they have an ethical responsibility to protect their most vulnerable users.
In the first paragraph of Meta’s Corporate Human Rights Policy, the company says one of their principles is to “keep people safe” on their platform: “We recognize all people are equal in dignity and rights. We are all equally entitled to our human rights, without discrimination. Human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.”
The policy also states that the company is committed to respecting human rights, including those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was officially adopted by the United Nations. According to the U.N., “discrimination against LGBTI people undermines the human rights principles outlined” in that declaration.
As Zuckerberg and Meta dismantle the safeguards for LGBTQ users and greenlight discrimination against transgender people, they are quite literally not practicing what they preach.
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LGBTQ Censorship and Erasure
In addition to the policy shifts, Meta’s supposed neutral moderation has created an alarming false equivalency between the moderation of hate speech and of LGBTQ-affirming language.
For months, posts and content using LGBTQ hashtags—including #LGBTQ, #Gay, #Lesbian and #Transgender—were hidden from teen searches on Instagram, effectively erasing queer visibility from discovery, untilUser Magexposed the practice and pressed the company for an explanation. Meta later walked back the restrictions, calling them an error. “These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,” a company spokesperson said.
Other instances of LGBTQ erasure were intentional. In January, Pride decorations and queer themes in Messenger—such as the trans and nonbinary chat themes—quietly disappeared. To some, this may seem insignificant. But for our community, especially LGBTQ kids—nearly 40% of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year—the disappearance of these features sent a symbolic message that queer expression is expendable when corporate priorities shift.
Dismantling DEI and Ditching Independent Fact Checkers
Inside the company, the same backpedaling is underway. In January, Meta dismantled its DEI programs. The company eliminated its entire DEI team; ended hiring practices that ensured diverse candidates were considered for open positions; shut down equity and inclusion training programs; and terminated its supplier diversity program that sourced from diverse-owned businesses.
Without internal accountability, external protections inevitably weaken. When companies eliminate the voices that champion vulnerable populations from within, decisions increasingly reflect only majority perspectives.
Another safeguard to fall was in January, when Meta cut ties with independent fact-checkers and weakened moderation frameworks by ending proactive enforcement and raising the threshold for content removal—tools that once slowed the spread of misinformation, hate and violence. “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said in a videoexplaining the changes.
Without them, disinformation targeting LGBTQ people now circulates faster and wider. In fact, leaked training materials from Meta show that comments like “Trans people are freaks” and “Gays are not normal” are among specific content they would now allow to proliferate online.
LGBTQ advocacy organizations have documented the fallout. According to GLAAD’s 2025 Make Meta Safe report, 75% of LGBTQ users reported seeing more harmful content on Meta platforms since these changes.
Unfortunately, Meta’s new rules are part of a wider trend among other tech giants that signifies a broader shrinking of digital civil rights protections. By February, YouTube had removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy. And Google eliminated all diversity hiring targets and, in March, scrubbed mentions of diversity from its responsible AI team webpage.
The human stakes are enormous. For many in our community—especially those in hostile environments—social media represents one of the few spaces where they can connect with others and express themselves without fear.
Meta’s changes don’t just affect online discourse; they impact real access to safety and support. Queer-owned businesses that relied on Meta’s advertising tools to reach LGBTQ customers are left navigating uncertain policies. Queer kids discovering their identity are encountering fewer affirming voices and more hostile rhetoric. Trans individuals searching for community find their lifelines weakened.
Rights secured after decades of struggle can be unraveled quickly when massive companies like Meta shift their priorities. Gains that once felt permanent can be undone in a matter of months.
The LGBTQ community has fought too hard to see their digital rights undone by corporate settlements and backroom policy changes. We know that true neutrality doesn’t mean treating all speech as equal—it means recognizing that some speech seeks to silence vulnerable citizens.
We’ve seen this before, from separate but equal policies that claimed neutrality while enforcing segregation; to McCarthyism-era institutions that purged dissenting voices in the name of balance; to media “objectivity” that erased queer voices during the AIDS crisis.
While the medium has changed, the playbook remains the same. And our response must be to stand up, speak out and demand accountability.
This means pressuring Meta through public campaigns, supporting LGBTQ content creators whose reach has been diminished, and pushing for transparent moderation policies. It means calling out right-wing dog whistles like “neutrality” and “viewpoint diversity” for what they are—a convenient masquerade for corporate policies that discriminate against and attack marginalized groups.
ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! on September 17 after the late-night host commented on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The suspension triggered strong responses across social media and beyond. Hashtags like #CancelDisneyPlus and #CancelHulu trended as users shared screenshots of their canceled subscriptions. Lawmakers, unions, and advocacy groups joined the conversation, framing the move as an attack on free expression rather than a programming choice.
With cancellations surging, many subscribers reported technical issues. On Reddit’s r/Fauxmoi, one post read, “The page to cancel your Hulu/Disney+ subscription keeps crashing.” Others said they faced looping logins and stalled forms. These firsthand accounts suggest Disney’s systems struggled under the unusual traffic volume.
Greenfield said that when packaged goods company Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s for $326 million in 2000, the “unique merger agreement” allowed them the independence to use their brand to speak out “in support of peace, justice, and human rights, not as abstract concepts, but in relation to real events happening in our world.” Today, he claimed it’s “profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone.”
“And it’s happening at a time when our country’s current administration is attacking civil rights, voting rights, the rights of immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ community,” Greenfield continued. “Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important, and yet Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power. It’s easy to stand up and speak out when there’s nothing at risk. The real test of values is when times are challenging and you have something to lose.”
Ben & Jerry’s was one of the first brands to support marriage equality, renaming its signature Chubby Hubby flavor to “Hubby Hubby” at its Vermont shops after same-sex couples were granted the right to legally marry in 2009. Today, it is one of the major corporations that has stood by its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, saying on its website that “instead of dismantling the programs designed to create equity across our society we should be dismantling white supremacy.”
Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit Unilever in November, accusing the company of violating its merger agreement by silencing its social media posts about Black Lives Matter and Palestine, firing the then-CEO David Stever for his posts, and blocking company donations to groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
“It was always about more than just ice cream; it was a way to spread love and invite others into the fight for equity, justice and a better world. Coming to the conclusion that this is no longer possible at Ben & Jerry’s means I can no longer remain part of Ben & Jerry’s,” Greenfield concluded. “If I can’t carry those values forward inside the company today, then I will carry them forward outside, with all the love and conviction I can.”
