Does social media silence and restrict LGBTQ+ content and creators? Alexander Monea, an author and professor, says yes, this is a common occurrence. He calls this “The Digital Closet."
Do social media platforms restrict or silence LGBTQ+ content? Inside Edition Digital spoke to several creators who think so. In May, Marcie Allen, her husband, Derek Van Mol, and other businesses in Nashville, Tennessee, threw a prom for B. B is a non-binary student who wasn’t allowed in their school prom for wearing a suit.
They own a live music venue, AB Hillsboro Village, and Marcie shared that their company’s Instagram page was restricted after posting about the LGBTQ+ event.
“They just said, ‘Your account has been restricted and will be under review by one of our community guidelines specialists.’ They said that I did not follow their community guidelines of positivity.” she told Inside Edition Digital.
“I literally cried. Because you know when you're working so hard, and then you hit that wall. Forty-eight hours. I cannot post a caption. I can post a picture with no caption. I can't tag anyone. I can't edit. This is a story about positivity, and love, and light, and they are choosing to limit our voices.”
Marcie shared that she returned to regular posts after the event, and her account was untouched. But a month later, she posted an event about a flash mob for Pride Month and was again blocked. She did some research and realized she wasn’t alone.
“And I started messaging with people, and it was the same thing over and over and over,” Marcie said. “‘Yup, I posted about a drag event that I'm hosting. I posted about a pride thing that we're hosting at our venue, and we got silenced.’ It was very just eerie how everyone's story was almost exactly alike.”
Inside Edition Digital also found several other examples of LGBTQ+ being restricted by platforms.
For example, Cruising Podcast, an account about lesbian bars in the U.S., shared a video about their struggles with Instagram restricting LGBTQ+ creators. Human Rights Campaign also posted a similar video calling out TikTok for restricting their video.
They said, in part, “TikTok, are you serious? You are literally banning us from doing life-saving work for LGBTQ+ folks. Why was this a violation in the first place?”
Under this video, hundreds of commenters had similar stories. Comments included, “I still have a video where I self-identify as queer you perma banned,” “I posted a video of my wife and I going to a pride-themed hockey game, and it was removed,” and “I'm consistently getting my lives reported for no reason. All I do is drag makeup.”
So is this common on social media with LGBTQ+ content and creators? Alexander Monea is an associate professor of English and Cultural Studies at George Mason University. He’s also an author. He says yes, this is a common occurrence, and he calls this “The Digital Closet.” He even wrote a book explaining this called “The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight.”
Monea told Inside Edition Digital that the internet is incredibly anti-LGBTQ+.
“Most queer internet users already know this,” he said. “They've experienced it in their everyday life, whether it's with their own posts or with posts from content creators that they follow. Whereas if you are a straight internet user that isn't connecting with queer content online, oftentimes this comes as a surprise.”
He says that there are several reasons why this happens.
“There's bias in the training data that the automated content moderation algorithms are trained on,” he shared. “The algorithms that automate content moderation are also hypersensitive. On top of that, the policies that these companies make to police content on their platforms are oftentimes created by a small number of men, often cisgender men, white men that are at the executive level.”
Monea added that the community flagging features on social media are often abused by anti-pornography and anti-queer activists online.
“And because queer identities are so often sexualized and pornographied, they tend to be collateral damage in this war on pornography.”
Monea notes that this kind of censorship is all too common.
“And there's just case after case like this as you look online, each one more depressing than the last.”
GLADD’s 2023 Social Media Safety Index rated various social media platforms focusing on quote LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. While no social media account scored over 63 percent, Instagram got the best score, and Twitter scored the worst. Overall, GLAAD stated that social media platforms are "unsafe for the LGBTQ community."
Digital activist Imran Ahmed, the CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told Inside Edition Digital that platforms aren’t just unsafe, they thrive off the toxicity.
“Their business is addiction,” he said. “They need you to spend as much time as possible watching their feed because that's how they make their money. Ninety-eight percent of the revenue of a company like Meta comes from advertising placed into that feed. And so what they're always trying to do is find the most contentious, the most controversial content because they've worked out that's the most addictive.”
He adds that at the end of the day, it’s all about what keeps users scrolling and on the platform for long periods.
“And [they] make sure that's seen by as many people as possible. And that's why we've seen such an increase in the amount of hate and disinformation that we're exposed to on a day-to-day basis, because the platforms amplify it at the expense of tolerance, good information, stuff that might actually be useful for society.”
All social media platforms have some sort of community guidelines that claim to control negativity. But Imran says they are not always correctly or strictly enforced.
“No one is actually checking to see if the rules are being followed,” he said. “The platforms don't want to invest into moderation to actually enforce their own rules with human moderators. So they've been using algorithms. Now, the problem with algorithms are they're very, very sort of — they're very stupid, really. They don't have human understanding or nuance or cultural appreciation.”
Social media is in many lives, and it isn’t going anywhere. But what can be done to make social media a safer space, not just for the LGBTQ+ community, but for all users? Ahmed says a good start is by people asking social media companies for more transparency.
“So just to give us more visibility of how their algorithms work, how their content enforcement decision works, how do they enforce the rules that we all sign up to on the platform, but also so some transparency of the advertising,” he explained. “So, how do the needs of your advertisers change the way that you present information to us?”
In addition, he stressed that legislation is needed.
“Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and their friends need reigning in,” Ahmed argues. “What we need is reform of the law. So these companies are subjected to the same negligence laws, the same product liability laws that every other industry is.“
Unfortunately, that could be easier said than done. Because at the end of the day, Monea says, it comes down to money.
“It's going to be a big combination of things,” he said. “I don't think that these platforms are protecting us. The only thing that these platforms protect are their profits. And because of that, that means that what they're really interested in protecting is user engagement on the site and the safety for brands to advertise on their platform."
“Crucially, the same nonsensical, biased, profit-driven impulses that create the digital closet can and have made other closets, political, cultural, racial, geographical, gendered, and it's in all of our interests to dismantle the digital closet and to do so soon.”
Inside Edition Digital contacted YouTube, TikTok, Meta, and Twitter for comment.
YouTube said, "We're committed to enforcing our Community Guidelines consistently for all creators on this platform." They also shared a video with their VP of Trust and Safety sharing details on how their community guidelines work.
TikTok said, “At TikTok, we're focused on building a safe and supportive platform where the LGBTQ+ community can keep inspiring and thriving."
Meta said, “We work to provide a safe place where people can connect online to raise awareness, share their voices, and bring the world closer together safely.”
Twitter responded to Inside Edition’s request for comment with a poop emoji.
