Mark Zuckerberg stood up in the Senate hearing room on Capitol Hill, turned around, and began to speak. It was hard to hear him over the camera clicks. I felt the room lift behind me as bereaved parents held up photos of their dead kids, lost to suicide or exploitation following exposure to Zuckerberg's online platforms. I realized I was standing by the time I could make out any of his words. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through,” he said.
That was January 31, 2024 and less than a year later, Zuckerberg announced Meta would be abandoning fact-checkers and implementing similar policies to Elon Musk's X.
This deeply craven and dangerous reversal, ostensibly to reduce “censorship” from Meta platforms, will make Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp even more unsafe for LGBTQ+ users. That’s why, after 13 years on Instagram, amassing 80,000 followers, and having monetarily benefited from being an influencer, I am finally leaving Instagram.
I initially joined Instagram because it was what all of my friends were doing. As a young dancer featured on television shows, it was a place to build and maintain connections and community. It was also a business, a place where I could earn money for more dance training and raise awareness about causes and issues I cared deeply about. But over time, due to policy and content moderation decisions made — or not made — by Meta, it went from something fun and engaging to something that fueled anxiety, took over my childhood, and ultimately caused harm to me and people I love.
At the end of the day, social media is a product of its environment, and the environment is getting worse. The rise in hate speech on social media has become a significant concern in recent years. Meta's decision to end its fact-checking program and ease content moderation will only add to the increase in harmful behaviors, including harassment and hate speech, especially if Zuckerberg implements something similar to X’s community notes. Giving anyone with a valid phone number and six months of a clean record on the platform the status of “approved moderator,” a status kept anonymous, is not enough to keep harmful disinformation and hate speech from spreading.
That doesn’t mean members of the LGBTQ+ community should lose hope entirely. There are people fighting to hold technology companies accountable and to make online spaces better. It’s important that young LGBTQ+ people know that there are people, like my colleagues at Heat Initiative, fighting for Big Tech to clean up their act, so that isolated members of the LGBTQ+ community aren’t forced to turn to dangerous online experiences when their in-person community fails them. The unfortunate reality is that, right now, the LGBTQ+ community is harmed disproportionally more on these platforms than their peers. Zuckerberg’s actions will only accelerate the risks that young LGBTQ+ people face on Meta’s platforms.
Ironically, Meta’s new policies seem likely to hurt their business too. In his announcement, Zuckerberg parroted language that has been used by Musk to justify the elimination of safety measures on X, but those decisions have proven to be terrible for X’s business. When Twitter became X and it immediately shifted away from a place people could connect and keep up to date to a cesspool of illegal and harmful content, users and advertisers fled. Zuckerberg should take note, especially since he said himself that it’s likely we will see a similar uptick in harmful content on Meta’s platforms.
But no one in the LGBTQ+ community should be under the illusion that social media or the newest technology will inherently increase connection or belonging. At least not without thorough protections. After I saw that even Apple CEO Tim Cook, a so-called LGBTQ+ advocate, donated $1 million dollars to the Trump Inauguration and sat directly behind the now president as he took the presidential oath, I was reminded again that technology CEOs are focused only on protecting their power. That unsettling realization and Zuckerberg’s announcement left me asking myself if I will keep using these platforms. Our LGBTQ+ community must come to terms with the fact that tech tycoons like Zuckerberg, Musk and Cook don’t have our best interests at heart. Ever.
Ultimately, we have to reckon with the fact that Meta’s new policies are just the latest in a long line of decisions that have put LGBTQ+ users at risk on their platforms. To know they have a ton of hate speech on their platforms, are building algorithms meant to addict young users to their products for life, and are actively moving to ensure less content safety, I can't sit idly by and use their platforms. Zuckerberg is taking the company in a fundamentally dangerous direction.
It is so clear to me that the young and wild toxic relationship of my youth was not with a romantic partner or friend, but with Mark Zuckerberg and the products he has built to imprison and profit off of our attention. And like many exes do, he sticks around uninvited — and I am certainly done giving him a pass.
Join me. It’s time to delete your Instagram.
Lennon Torres is an LGBTQ+ advocate who grew up in the public eye, gaining national recognition as a young dancer on television shows. With a deep passion for storytelling, advocacy, and politics, Lennon now works to center the lived experience of herself and others as she crafts her professional career in online child safety at Heat Initiative, aiming to bridge the gap between online safety and LGBTQ+ representation through intentionally inclusive strategies. Lennon’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennon-torres-325b791b4/
Topics Facebook Instagram LGBTQ Social Good Meta
