Discord promises to punish users for misgendering & deadnaming trans people

The popular social media platform Discord recently updated its Hateful Conduct Policy to explicitly forbid misgendering and deadnaming. Its updated policy comes after X (formerly Twitter) removed its policies forbidding transphobic hate speech earlier this year.

“You may not post, share, or engage in: Repeatedly using slurs to degrade and demean individuals or groups. This includes deadnaming or misgendering a transgender person,” the platform’s policy section explains. The policy applies to its estimated 350 million registered users and 150 million monthly active users.

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Discord may make exceptions to its policy to allow for “reclaimed language, satire, educational or documentary purposes,” it wrote. However, it added, “The use of satire must be obvious and we will not allow users to deflect blame retroactively by claiming their statements were made ironically or as a joke.”

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Users who violate the policies will receive a direct message from Discord specifically informing them of their offending content, the policy it violated, and any actions Discord has taken on the user. Users who commit a “severe” policy violation (or repeatedly violate policies) can be permanently suspended, the company explained.

The LGBTQ+ media organization GLAAD praised Discord for its policy, writing, “Alongside inflammatory mischaracterizations of transgender healthcare and baseless assertions of trans and LGBTQ people being threats to children, the practice of targeted misgendering and deadnaming has emerged in recent years as one of the most common modalities for expressing contempt and hate toward trans and nonbinary people across all social media platforms.”

“The trope is extremely popular amongst high-follower anti-LGBTQ accounts and is especially utilized to bully, mock, and harass prominent trans public figures… to escalate visibility and engagement on posts, while it also functions as a vehicle to express general hatred of trans and nonbinary people and the community as a whole.”

GLAAD noted that “of six major social media platforms – TikTok, YouTube, X, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – only TikTok expressly prohibits targeted misgendering and deadnaming in its hate and harassment policy.” Meta’s policies state, “Hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community is prohibited.”

In April, X quietly removed a line in its “Hateful Conduct” policy that protected transgender people from online abuse. In October, X removed the ability for users to specifically report anti-trans harassment on the site.

A February 2023 GLAAD poll of LGBTQ+ X users found that 60% of respondents had experienced an increase in abusive and hateful speech on the platform since anti-trans billionaire Elon Musk took over the company.

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

A June 2023 survey from the Anti-Defamation League found that three-quarters of transgender respondents said they had been harassed or targeted online during the past year.

“[Such mistreatment] pushes people out of the conversation, impinging on their own freedom of expression, causing emotional distress, reputational and economic harm,” Yael Eisenstat, head of the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society told Axios.

Eisenstat added, “Social media posts on mainstream platforms that target trans people have been directly linked to bomb and death threats against hospitals that provide gender-affirming care,”