It Gets Better Project leaves Twitter/X because it is too unsafe for LGBTQ+ youth

The It Gets Better Project has announced that it is leaving Twitter/X because the platform is no longer a safe space for the organization to do its work.

It Gets Better is devoted to empowering LGBTQ+ youth around the world. A statement from the organization posted to Twitter/X said the platform does not allow the team to “safely and effectively do this work, so we are pausing all future content.”

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The statement continued, “But, to the 187k+ folks who joined our movement on Twitter/X – you can still find community at itgetsbetter.org and on all of our other social media platforms… Let’s keep the queer joy front and center!”

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Ross von Metzke, It Gets Better’s senior director of communications and public relations, told Advocate that it has become virtually impossible to block hate speech on the site and that hateful comments have been dominating the top of feeds. He said it has “gotten very TERF-y and anti-trans, very divisive.”

Because It Gets Better is designed specifically to empower youth, the organization feared the repercussions of kids seeing the hateful comments.

Von Metzke acknowledged that other platforms certainly have their problems but are much better than Twitter/X.

Since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, the site has become the Internet version of the wild west, with content moderation and hate speech policies dialed back significantly. When Musk took the helm, he fired scores of content moderators and restored the accounts of users who had previously violated the site’s hate speech policies.

In March, The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that posts linking LGBTQ+ people to “grooming” and pedophilia have increased by 119% under Musk.

“This isn’t an accident. Elon Musk put up the ‘Bat Signal’ to homophobes, transphobes, racists, and all manner of disinformation actors, encouraging them to flood onto Twitter,” said CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed. “Not only has Musk’s ownership of the platform coincided with an explosion of the hateful ‘grooming’ narrative, but Twitter is monetizing hate at an unprecedented rate.”

CCDH’s head of research Callum Hood said that tolerance of content perpetuating the false “groomer” narrative, which links LGBTQ+ people to pedophilia, is part of Musk’s business model at Twitter.

In April, the company also quietly removed a line in its “Hateful Conduct” policy that protected transgender people from online abuse.

Twitter’s policy used to state, “We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

On April 8th, that final line was removed.

Musk himself also has a long history of transphobic rhetoric.