There are, of course, bigger issues afoot. As I pen this, we are days away from Donald Trump’s second inauguration, as well as a torrent of day-one executive orders. Many of those are expected to curtail transgender rights, even as immigrants and others face confinement and deportation.
I do not have an insight into all of that just yet, aside from the rather big, obvious clues from Project 2025 that have been floating around for ages now. What we do know is that it will be monumental, soul-bruising and nightmarish.
I think we can also look at some of the moves occurring with social media for some solid examples of the sort of corruption and bigotry that will be driving the next few years.
Of course, we already saw what happened with Twitter, now X. The site was always filled with bigots, and their Trust & Safety team had to regularly play Whac-A-Mole on the worst of them. It did a fairly good job in its time, but it nevertheless always had its issues as it strived to be our “digital town square.”
Then Elon Musk, who bragged about the notion of buying the site, was forced to put the money — not necessarily his, mind you — where his mouth was.
Since then, the site has become a haven to some of the worst, with Musk himself trying to do his level best to top them all. With his estrangement from his transgender daughter — as well as his own anti-LGBTQ+ biases that likely existed decades before she walked the earth — the site has become pretty welcoming for anti-trans voices.
Rather than attempting to safeguard language, X has only encouraged anti-trans voices, all the while barring the use of the word, “cisgender.” The term, essentially meaning “not-transgender,” was banned from the service.
I would be remiss if I did not note that Musk also helped finance and promote Trump’s re-election.
Mark Zuckerberg, however, decided that he, too, wanted a piece of what X was doing. Along with his current turn toward Trump, his company, Meta, decided to make a few big changes in how they moderate Facebook, Instagram, and all of their various apps and websites.
While the removal of fact-checkers from the U.S. side of the site has garnered the most attention. It was his new allowance for bigoted language that mostly caught my eye.
Consider these examples, garnered from training materials acquired by The Intercept. You are now welcome to say, “Gays are freaks,” or say that immigrants are “grubby, filthy pieces” of, well, excrement.
Key to this, however, is that gender and gender identity are completely freed up from any restrictions. Saying that, “trans people are mentally ill” is considered perfectly acceptable on Meta’s properties, as is “look at that tranny,” posted beneath a photo of a 17-year-old girl.
Zuckerberg claims this is about getting Facebook back to its roots. Though I have to note the site initially started as a way he could rate the attractiveness of female college students. He also seems to claim this has something to do with masculinity, though he seems to be close to the play-acting of a pre-teen boy trying to imagine what masculinity is after one-too-many Batman movies.
Perhaps he, too, should spend some time considering his own gender issues — but I digress.
I don’t feel we can change these for the better, at least not in the short term. X seems a lost cause, and I suspect Meta’s products are as well.
The policies of X, and the changes at Meta, will also surely lead to similar elsewhere. I expect we’ll hear more from Google — specifically about YouTube — soon. Of course, the incoming administration will most likely have more to say with all this, too, given that so many tech giants are likely making some of these moves to appease it.
While I have left X, and am winding down my involvement with Instagram and Facebook, I do fully understand if anyone isn’t quite ready to do the same. We have spent the last decade or two siloing ourselves into these sites, using their reach to help build our networks. It’s difficult to disentangle from that.
Yes, consider this: if you are not considering your exit and building up your next option post-Meta or X, then you really are helping support their policies. Additionally, understand that these sites will get worse, and your audience will leave. Eventually, you will be promoting yourself to a whole new, hostile, bigoted audience. You may not be able to move now, sure, but plan your exit — and start building toward it now.
For myself, I’ve rebuilt my own website for those who need to find me, and moved my main social media presence to Bluesky, which is a bit less beholden on billionaires. I am not, however, suggesting that Bluesky is the basket for your eggs. There may well be other options that fit you better, and there may be options not yet built.
Heck, you might be the one to your own new and amazing thing, and this may be the opportunity to do so. Really, that is what I’m hoping for.
I am old enough to remember the internet from before X, or Meta or a whole lot of other things. While the big players have provided useful tools and a lot of reach for our voices, it may be a time for us to control our own places, and for our community to build something entirely our own.
Perhaps it is time for us to lead.
Gwen Smith was once friends with Tom on Myspace. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.