If you think anti-LGBTQ+ claims of sexual “grooming” have increased, it’s not just your imagination. New research has confirmed that accusations of “grooming” exploded online after Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law was passed, with a 406% increase in tweets using the slurs “groomer” or “pedophile” in the month following the law’s passing.
A 46-page report released Wednesday by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reviews data from nearly a million tweets that were posted between January 1 and July 27 this year. In addition to the sheer volume of tweets, researchers also examined a sample of the 500 “grooming” tweets with the most engagement, for a total of 72 million views. They found that only a small handful of Twitter users were driving the majority of that engagement, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw, Chaya Raichik (the right-wing influencer behind anti-queer account Libs of TikTok), and alt-right activist Jack Posobiec.
Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, claimed that we are “in the middle of a growing wave of hate and demonization targeting LGBTQ+ people — often distributed digitally by opportunistic politicians and so-called ‘influencers’ for personal gain.”
“Online hate and lies reflect and reinforce offline violence and hate. The normalization of anti-LGBTQ+ narratives in digital spaces puts LGBTQ+ people in danger,” Ahmed said in a press release. “The clear message from social media giants is that they are willing to turn a blind eye.”
That assertion was backed by data from the study. After Twitter issued a statement on July 21 that using the word “groomer” as a slur against LGBTQ+ people was a violation of the platform’s policies against hate speech, researchers anonymously reported 100 of the most-viewed tweets containing the slur — and reported that the company failed to act on 99 of them. Two days later, only one tweet had been found to violate the Twitter rules and was removed, although the account was still active.
Perhaps worse than Twitter’s negligence was Meta’s active participation in taking ad money from people seeking to promote the “grooming narrative.” The study also identified 59 paid ads on Meta’s Ad Library that propagate the idea that LGBTQ+ people are inherently harmful to children, all of which received a collective 2.1 million impressions across Instagram and Facebook. That included ads claiming that teachers who are LGBTQ+ inclusive are “perverts and predators,” or that mentions of LGBTQ+ people in schools constitutes “radical sexual grooming.” Meta received up to $24,987 in payment for the ads, despite telling news outlets on July 20 that using “groomer” as a slur violates hate speech policies.
Thirty-two out of those 59 ads specifically targeted Disney, who have become a recent favorite scapegoat of the right because of its milquetoast opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. That included ads from conservative commentator Candace Owens, who claimed that Disney was complicit in the “intentional and overt confusion and sexualization of our children in the classroom,” and another set of ads from conservative propaganda machine PragerU, which claimed that Disney was “inject[ing] sexualization LGBTQ+ content into its programming.” Similarly, Twitter saw a 10,854% increase in tweets targeting Disney with grooming accusations in the month following the passage of “Don’t Say Gay,” for a total of 345,152 tweets. Just as with Twitter, researchers found that Meta failed to remove all but one of the ads that were flagged.
The report ends with several recommendations from the researchers. They include hiring and training moderators who can enforce community standards, banning hashtags and accounts that are used to push anti-LGBTQ+ hate, and increasing transparency with regards to algorithmic bias, advertising, and how rules are enforced. Lastly, the report calls for platforms to be held liable for “repeatedly and unreasonably” failing to enforce community standards, though it’s worth noting that this recommendation is controversial among digital freedom of speech advocates.
Regardless of how exactly the exponential rise in anti-LGBTQ+ should be tampered, it’s evident that this is a problem that won’t go away on its own. HRC interim president Joni Madison said that platform negligence is allowing extremists to wield “dangerous influence, seeking to radicalize Americans, incite hate against LGBTQ+ people, and mobilize the extremists within their base ahead of the midterm elections.”
Maddison added that this rise in vitriol “doesn’t just have political implications — there are deadly, real world consequences as violent rhetoric leads to stigma, radicalization, and ultimately violence,” she said in a press release, while noting that one in five hate crimes is motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias. “HRC, along with our partners at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, urgently calls on social media companies to act swiftly and transparently to stop the spread of extremist and hateful misinformation, including the grooming narrative.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.