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.”
As Florida transportations continue a literal erasure of rainbow street art, local governments and businesses are seeking new ways to honor the LGBTQ+ population.
In Delray Beach, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration sandblasted an intersection after city officials refused to remove it themselves, City Commissioners this week brainstormed new tributes. According to a local CBS affiliate, that could include establishing an entire Pride Street, putting up murals on a city parking garage, or adding light projects on a water tower.
In Orlando, where the DeSantis administration started his battle against street art by blacking out a crosswalk honoring victims of the Pulse shooting and arrestingpeople who chalked colors back in, private businesses have already started replacing the lost rainbows.
The Se7enBites restaurant just hosted a “Parking Spaces for Pride” opening 49 spots in its lot, one for each victim of the Pulse shooting, to be painted in tribute instead, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Some spaces ended up with rainbow motifs, while others bear messages like “Color the World Kind.”
That came after MojoMan Swimwear, an LGBTQ-owned business in Orlando, painted the area in front of its business with a large progress pride flag. Out Florida Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith spotlighted the new mural in a social media video earlier this month.
“We are not going to be erased as the LGBTQ+ community,” MojoMan founder Lane Blackwell said in the video. “I wanted to show my support as a gay business that is gay-owned and operated.”
In Gainesville, rainbow murals popped up across the city after local rainbow crosswalks were removed, according to The Independent Florida Alligator. That has included a number of murals painted, often in the dead of night, by University of Florida students at the Norman Tunnel on campus, though competing groups have sometimes come in and painted over those works with fraternity letters or pro-Donald Trump messages.
In Sarasota, The Harvest, an LGBTQ-inclusive church, painted rainbow crosswalks on its own private property, according to Patch. That church is led by Pastor Dan Minor, who attended high school with Pulse victim Eddie Sotomayor.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first crosswalk they painted over was at the Pulse Memorial,” he told the outlet. The church, he said, felt compelled to respond to the state action.
The DeSantis administration began removing rainbow murals following directionfrom Transportation Secretary and former The Real World cast member Sean Duffy. After first focusing on rainbow mural that DeSantis criticized as political messaging, the state made clear it would remove all street art in the state.
Some municipalities have continued to fight for their local rainbow crosswalks. Fort Lauderdale has appealed a state order to scrub its streets of color, according to a local NPR station. But legal efforts have fallen short considering the state changed all of its guidance on what is permissible on public streets.
It’s not just individual companies or Pride celebrations — even journalism is starting to suffer as conservatives wage war on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Brands are becoming increasingly reluctant to sponsor or work with LGBTQ+ publications amid anti-DEI campaigns, with several prominent outlets reporting loss of support from advertisers. Mark Berryhill, CEO of equalpride, the parent company of The Advocate, Out, and Pride.com, told The Guardian that companies recently “may have been a little bit more cautious than they have been in the past.”
“We’ve tried to do a better job in this political climate of just selling the importance of our buying power,” Berryhill said. “Everybody’s cautious, and I don’t think it’s just LGBTQ. I think they’re cautious in general right now with their work with minority-owned companies.”
Tag Warner, CEO of Gay Times, revealed that the publication has lost 80 percent of its advertisers in the past year, as well as over $6.7 million in expected advertiser revenue. Executives at Amaliah, GUAP, and Stream Publishing, which publishes Attitude magazine, also reported facing hesitancy from brands recently — though it didn’t start with Donald Trump.
Even before Trump’s executive orders terminating all DEI positions in the federal government, dozens of major companies had already abandoned their practices. Many made their decisions after conservatives online specifically targeted them for their policies and threatened boycotts, with failed filmmaker turned failed congressional candidate Robby Starbuck taking credit for spearheading the movement.
Many of the companies abandoning DEI also stopped sponsoring Juneteenth and Pride events. Heritage of Pride, the organization that produces New York City’s annual Pride events, previously had five “Platinum” donors — those who had donated $175,000. This year, it has just one. Groups behind WorldPride, San Francisco Pride, Silicon Valley Pride, Oakland Pride, St. Louis Pride, Columbus Pride, Twin Cities Pride, and Toronto Pride have also reported losing sponsors.
Research suggests that companies abandoning their inclusive practices may be acting hastily. Americans are twice as likely to buy or use a brand that supports LGBTQ+ rights, according to a GLAAD survey, and those ages 18 to 34 are over five times more likely to want to work at a company if it publicly supports LGBTQ+ rights.
“The one thing that maybe this whole controversy has helped us with a little bit is to really make brands realize it’s a business decision. It’s not just a charity or something you should do because you feel guilty,” Berryhill continued. “You should do it because it’s the right thing to support LGBTQ journalism. We’re small. We need to get the word out. We have important stories to tell. But it’s also a good business decision. The more we show that side, certain brands will come along.”
But how does Google’s algorithm decide which results show up? And how do these results influence LGBTQ kids, their parents and Americans at large who are searching for help?
Uncloseted Media asked five Americans from around the country to Google five common queries related to LGBTQ identity, religion and parenting.
The results were alarming and raised an urgent question: With nearly 40% of LGBTQ youth seriously considering suicide just last year, what happens when a queer teen or the parent of a gay kid in crisis turns to Google?
Photos courtesy of participants Mark Just, Genna and Melanie Brown, April Samberg, Tommy O’Neil. Photo of Genna and Melanie by Kaoly Gutteriez.
“I’m Christian, my daughter is a lesbian,” Melanie Brown, a Southern Baptist from High Point, North Carolina, types into Google.
When Brown presses enter, Bible Bulletin Board comes up as the third result, with the suggestion of “offering hope for change,” and “lead[ing] the way to the alternative to homosexuality.” It goes on to explain that “homosexuality is contrary to God’s Word. It is sin and as always results in sin’s destructive effects on the individual and on those close to them.”
In the living room, Brown’s 15-year-old daughter Genna, with her dog on her lap, Googles “accurate information on gay kids and what to do.”
Focus on the Family (FOTF) is the first result. She clicks the link and lands on the platform of a hyper-religious organization known for promoting conversion therapy and labeling her sexuality as sinful.
The site, which presents itself as a reputable religious source, features a tab titled “Understanding Homosexuality” and a section under their resources for “Homosexuality.” It states: “[FOTF] is committed to upholding God’s design for the expression of human sexuality: a husband and wife in a marriage.”
It offers suggested reading on “redemption” from a gay lifestyle, along with 11 counseling resources aimed at changing sexual orientation, including The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, which guarantees “professional assistance … for persons who experience unwanted homosexual attractions.”
The language is intentionally padded, which means Genna and her mom—and many of the other millions of Christian parents of queer kids—may never know that Google led them to a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group. FOTF is known for its long-standing opposition to LGBTQ rights, for spreading anti-LGBTQ disinformation and for framing homosexuality and transgender identity as sinful and disordered.
In South Boston, Virginia, Tommy O’Neil Googles, “My daughter just came out as trans and I’m a Christian.” As a father of two, he wants what’s best for his kids. According to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Google’s second result, O’Neil should recognize that God doesn’t make mistakes when assigning sex and give sympathy for those who are indoctrinated in the “transgender cult.”
Thousands of miles away in Anchorage, Alaska, 38-year-old bisexual woman April Samberg Googles, “I am bisexual and have a husband who is Christian, am I going to hell?”
The third result is once again an article by FOTF that tells April that “same-sex-attracted strugglers” and “transgender and homosexual lust and behavior are wrong.”
In Cincinnati, 44-year-old Mark Just Googles, “accurate information on homosexual kids and what to do.” FOTF is the top search result.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Just told Uncloseted Media. “It’s disturbing because if there are people out there who want to accept and understand their children or loved ones, this is what they’re being pointed to.”
“[I feel] fear for the queer kids with Christian parents who will be seeing that and thinking it’s good advice, and sorrow for the kids with parents who already have,” says Genna Brown, who was a “self-loathing, suicidal kid” who thought God would punish her for being gay before she came out to her now accepting parents. “It’s pretty awful that this is what’s being pushed for advice. This has no doubt harmed people.”
Uncloseted Media also asked folks in Taiwan, Lebanon, China, Hong Kong, Canada and India to Google similar queries. All of them had FOTF turn up as a top search result.
Google, like other search engines, compiles information and directs users to various websites by referencing the titles of web pages that it judges to be most reflective of what was searched.
“Google’s algorithm is notoriously a black box,” says Jesse Ringer, founder of Method and Metric, a search engine optimization (SEO) growth company. “That’s intentional to keep their competitive advantage.”
What we do know is that Google ranks search results by first crawling the web with an automated program called “spiders” to follow links from page to page and collect data.
It uses text matching to identify documents that it thinks are relevant to a query and then ranks them based on a combination of popularity, freshness, location and previous links clicked.
But for people searching for reliable information, its process can be problematic.
“Google doesn’t rank based on accuracy, but on popularity and query matching,” says Dirk Lewandowski, professor of information research and retrieval at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. “This is based on clicks and a network of how many other links are directed to this website. … Of course, users click what is shown in the first position. So we have kind of a rich get richer.”
How to Get a High Ranking
As websites with the highest rankings continue to receive more clicks, websites like FOTF can also employ other tactics to keep their prominent placement.
Backlinking—the process of having other web pages hyperlink back to your site—is one of the ways to maintain your high ranking.
“Backlinks are a big part of popularity. So the relationship between other websites linking to this source is a big part of Google’s algorithm,” says Ringer. “There are SEO businesses that build link farms so that the content of their clients can go higher. They create a network effect and they link to each other. It is not unreasonable to think that [FOTF] has hired either an SEO person or they’ve hired an external agency to contribute to that.”
According to Francesca Tripodi, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, ranking can also be gamed by matching keywords to content. Tripodi looked at the metadata of progressive and conservative companies and found that conservative content creators “are much better at doing this.”
“They are savvy at creating new sets of words and tagging their content with them,” she says. “That’s not something I’m seeing with progressive content creators.”
Tripodi says that not only does conservatism thrive online, it might be the only perspective returned.
“They are well-funded companies with large production budgets and effective digital marketing teams,” she wrote in a 2019 testimony about conservatism and Google searches. “This is why when you search for liberal phrases like ‘gender identity’ or ‘social justice’ the top returns … are conservative content creators.”
Google declined to speak on record with Uncloseted Media for this story.
In an email, a spokesperson said: “Like any search engine, Google indexes the content that’s available on the open web, relying on systems like keyword matching to surface relevant results. We are largely guided by local law when it comes to removing pages from search results.”
What If It’s Harmful or Illegal?
The United States notoriously protects harmful or misleading content—including anti-LGBTQ hate speech—under the First Amendment.
“The situation in [other countries] is a bit different than in America,” Lewandowski says. “For instance, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So Google bans these sites, but they don’t ban them in the U.S.”
Section 230 of the U.S. law protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by implying that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements on the internet. This law largely takes legal pressure off of Google.
And in 2003, an Oklahoma court ruled that Google’s rankings are subjective opinions and thus constitutionally protected.
Google’s policies for tamping down on harmful content “don’t apply to web results.” Thus, there is little moderation on the web pages that pop up for Americans who use the search engine.
The spokesperson for Google says that “[they] hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to legal requirements to remove pages from Google search results” and that “they don’t remove web results except for child sexual abuse, highly personal information, spam, site owner requests, and valid legal requests.”
But according to the company, “determining whether content is illegal is not always a determination that Google is equipped to make.”
Tripodi says this might be why groups like FOTF are still showing up, even though conversion therapy is illegal in 23 states. She says these groups may have found a loophole in Google’s policy by “tricking” the search engine into thinking they are providing “resources” and not simply a recommendation for conversion therapy.
“Google has a responsibility for what is coming up in their results because people trust [them],” says Lewandowski. “They think something is correct or accurate because it is number one in Google.”
Fifteen-year-old Genna Brown is one of the 85% of Americans who feel this way, according to a 2025 study.
“Isn’t the first result typically ranked most credible?” she says. “Because I typically trust the first result more.”
“It’s pretty concerning what comes up when you search for these things,” Ringer says. “There needs to be more done to educate the people who are doing the searches on understanding news and information.”
But vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ kids who are living in households where they are told they are going to hell and parents who are often confused and in crisis themselves, are being led by Google’s algorithm to believe that being queer is wrong.
“1000% yes, these results concern me,” says Genna Brown. “We’re talking about organizations that promote practices like conversion therapy, which is insane. … I wish there was some disclaimer. Like, ‘Google has determined this to be a subjective query. As such, we can’t verify the following results. Proceed with caution.’”
Tripodi says she thinks consumers are responsible for about 20% of the burden by researching and verifying the sources they learn from. But she agrees with Brown in that Google carries an ethical responsibility for the content it chooses to rank and promote.
“As a global corporation that gobbles up all other possibilities for information, Google has a responsibility to ensure that its content is accurate and not harmful,” Tripodi says. “[It’s their job] to ensure that the information that they surface is accurate and reliable because we know people trust that information.”
Uncloseted Media reached out to Focus on the Family, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Bible Bulletin Board. They did not respond to our request for comment.
Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Spencer Macnaughton.
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Sawyer Hemsley, founder of Crumbl Cookies who serves as the company’s Chief Branding Officer, came out as gay late Monday night after various videos and social media threads publicly discussed his sexuality based on the entrepreneur’s online presence.
Hemsley wrote in an Instagram post shared on Monday, August 25:
“Over the past little while, there have been people online trying to define me, twist things, and share conversations in ways that feel harmful. Instead of letting others write my story, I want to share it in my own words.
The truth is, over the past few years I’ve come to understand and accept that I’m gay. It’s taken me a long time to really process this part of myself and even longer to feel comfortable enough to say it out loud. For most of my life, I didn’t have the clarity to answer the questions or respond to the rumors. Coming to terms with it has been overwhelming and, at times, scary — but it has also brought me peace, joy, and authenticity that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I grew up with values and beliefs that I still deeply love and respect, which made this journey more complicated. But I remain grateful for my foundation, even as I’ve worked to embrace this truth about myself.
I know some people may have questions or even judgments, but my hope is that kindness, empathy, and love will lead the way. I’ve learned so much through this process — about strength, compassion, and the importance of living authentically.
Hemsley concluded the post writing, “At the end of the day, I’m deeply thankful: for the opportunities I’ve had, for the people who support me, and for the chance to live and share my story. It’s a journey of growth and honesty, and one I’ll never stop being grateful for.”
A feature published on the Utah State Magazine wrote about Hemsley’s upbringing as a Mormon.
“Growing up in Southeastern Idaho, Sawyer Hemsley served as the student body president at Preston High School. He got involved in student politics again at Utah State after serving a mission in Mexico for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but following a stint as student events vice president, Hemsley took an even bigger swing and ran for student body president in the spring of 2017.”
Hemsley cofounded Crumbl Cookies alongside Jason McGowan in 2017 and opened the company’s first store in Logan, Utah. Since then, Crumbl has grown to have “more than 1,000 locations across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada,” The New York Times reports.
Crumbl also has a huge social media following that includes 10.6 million followers (along with 98.9 million likes) on TikTok, 6.3 million followers on Instagram, 3.9 million followers on Facebook, and nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube.
