TikTok has updated its “hateful ideologies” policy with new speech restrictions to specifically include a ban on “misgendering,” and “deadnaming.”
The term “misgendering” on social media often means referring to someone as a gender with which they do not identify – for example calling someone that sees themselves as a transgender woman a “man.”
“Deadnaming” refers to using the birth name or former name of a person that they no longer use.
Cormac Keenan, the head of trust and safety at TikTok, said in the post that these “ideologies have long been prohibited” on the Chinese-owned social platform, but that the company wanted to make it more explicit.
Keenan said the change came after complaints from “civil society organizations” who said that it was “important to be explicit in [TikTok’s] community guidelines.”
“On top of this, we hope our recent feature enabling people to add their pronouns will encourage respectful and inclusive dialogue on our platform,” Keenan said.
The GLAAD organization praised TikTok for the ban saying that platforms “create an unsafe environment for LGBTQ people online” when “misgendering or deadnaming” are not banned.
