Social media platforms are crumbling—and that hurts trans people

I was a relatively early adopter of Facebook in the late aughts. Having graduated high school in 2001, and college in 2005, I was in that early-adult phase of life in a new town far away from home when the platform launched, so Facebook became an amazing tool for reconnecting with the folks I grew up and went to school with. It was exciting to see who ended up where and which friend got the most interesting first jobs.

I wouldn’t say I was a frequent user of the site, though viewing or sharing the occasional life update was always fun: new jobs, getting married, having kids and for me, my transition in 2016. 

But over time, as the platform evolved, Facebook became a bloated mess of random interest groups, ads and, eventually, just general AI slop. The life updates from friends became less and less frequent—recently I’d only use Facebook to see my mom’s pictures.

Until last week. Last week, I finally decided to delete my account.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that the platform would allow hate speech against trans people like me on the platform. Use of the slur “tranny” and calling trans and queer people mentally ill is now fine according to Meta’s newest terms of service (TOS), at least in the U.S. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, three of the largest social media sites on the English-speaking internet.

The TOS changes at the company follow Meta’s appointment of Dustin Carmack, one of the writers of Trump’s Project 2025—an agenda to quickly sweep extremist conservative policy into being once Trump takes office later this week. Additionally, Zuckerberg himself gave a self-satisfied interview on conservative commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast, talking about how American corporations shouldn’t be afraid of having a “masculine energy,” whatever that means.

Now, Facebook and the other sites owned by Meta have never exactly been paragons of safety for trans people—Facebook’s most shared articles were consistently revealed to be anti-trans pieces for many years before the company stopped sharing that data publicly—but the new TOS makes clear that Zuckerberg simply doesn’t want trans people on his platforms.

That’s fine. I can move.

Beyond my individual calculus over whether to leave Meta platforms, it’s concerning that trans people have been forced to flee so many mainstream social media sites in the last two years. In 2024, most of us left X for the somewhat greener pastures of Bluesky. TikTok is on the verge of getting banned in the U.S. The walls of our online spaces are closing in on us day by day.

With every platform change comes a handful of lost contacts and friends. I’m lucky enough to have thousands of followers who will go out of their way to find me on new platforms, but that’s not true for all trans people. Loneliness is always a risk for us, as going out in public can often be a scary proposition. Some people depend on their online connections for human interaction.

Trans people have long found one another online to connect socially, but also to share resources and advice on navigating the medical system, and to organize politically. This last thing, of course, is why conservative billionaires like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have taken steps to push us away from their sites.

Having said that, I have every confidence in trans people’s ability to connect with one another without these hostile platforms. We have been through worse times, with fewer and more obscure places to connect. Heck, I remember the late aughts and the sketchy trans-related chat rooms on America Online. Most of those were chockablock full of creepy chasers.

My worry is that we will eventually be driven out of every mainstream social media site, forcing us to create our own segregated online space out of sight and out of mind of cis society. The only way to move trans acceptance forward is for everyday cis straight people to see us existing—and online contact can help with that. Showing them that we are more than just our identities, that we have interests, hobbies and, yes, politics, of our own is key. Not only that, but many trans people end up realizing that they are trans, or that a nice trans life is possible, by seeing others like us online.

I hope Bluesky is a place where we can safely exist over the long run, though the safety team there lost some community trust after fumbling things when an infamous anti-trans personality initially migrated to the site to cause a stir. It’s currently the only social media site that I’m active on and I just this week passed my former follower count from Twitter.

I don’t want to move sites again. I want to exist in peace online, posting my little articles and the occasional sick gaming clip. In a world where our billionaire tech oligarchs are in charge of the internet public square, my posts are not welcome.

I can take a hint. Goodbye, Mr. Zuck.