Meta has made over $1.6 million from ads for the Daily Wire’s heinous anti-trans film

A recent Media Matters analysis has found that Meta has earned over $1.6 million from ads taken out by the far-right Daily Wire to promote its viciously anti-trans film Lady Ballers.

The media watchdog group found that the Daily Wire ran 183 ads to promote the film on both Facebook and Instagram, with at least 150 of those ads including clips that violate Meta’s anti-hate speech policies.

Related:

“Lady Ballers” is too stupid to even be anti-trans propaganda

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a spitball launched from the back of the classroom.

Lady Ballers tells the story of a group of cisgender men deciding to pretend to be trans women and join a women’s basketball league as one team with the intent of dominating the sport. The trailer calls the film the “most triggering comedy of the year,” a derisive reference to the right-wing narrative that progressives are “snowflakes” who are easily triggered. 

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Clips also show the film mocking trans activist Dylan Mulvaney – who is not a professional athlete at all – and reveal a cameo by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Another scene also shows the actors disrespecting the concept of trans identities by saying it’s also possible to be “trans age” and play on children’s sports teams as adults. The trailer then cuts to an adult severely injuring a child during a baseball game.

The film stars several Daily Wire commentators, including one of its most well-known, Matt Walsh, who is known for his own anti-trans film, What is a Woman?

LGBTQ Nation writer John Russell watched the entire film and described it as “vile” and something that “should be consigned to the compost heap of history to rot.” Russell wrote that he can’t even call the film anti-trans propaganda because the term “implies that there are ideas involved, and the film has none.”

“Its worldview is that of the know-nothing bully,” he continued. “It simply repeats the anti-trans talking points that have become depressingly common in right-wing media without unpacking, interrogating, defending, or even explaining them… It’s the cinematic — and I’m using that word extremely loosely here — equivalent of a spitball launched from the back of the classroom.”

Media Matters said the ads showing clips from the film violated Meta’s ban on “mocking people on the basis of their Protected Characteristics,” and its ban on ads doing the same.

Meta has long been criticized for failing to enforce these policies. In October, a report from Media Matters blasted the company for allowing an anti-LGBTQ+ group to spread hate speech and misinformation about LGBTQ+ people on its platforms in violation of the company’s policies for over a year.

The report detailed dozens of instances in which Gays Against Groomers used its Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts to post anti-LGBTQ+ content, including false claims that trans people are mentally ill and that LGBTQ+ people embrace pedophilia, as well as misinformation about gender-affirming care and the false “groomer” narrative propagated by the anti-LGBTQ+ right.