Big Tech invokes 'self-harm' to censor criticism of gender ideology, may ban 'misgendering' entirely

A law professor recently advised social media platforms how they can easily and cheaply "defang" California's new content moderation and "hate speech" disclosure law if a federal appeals court lifts its injunction against AB 587, the target of litigation by Elon Musk's X and Christian satire site The Babylon Bee.

George Washington University's John Banzhaf, a longtime free speech crusader even on the White House-adjacent campus, posted three paragraphs of boilerplate that amount to platforms declining to define or use terms such as "hate speech," "misinformation" and "foreign political interference," and thus have nothing to disclose if they do take action against user content.

YouTube and Facebook, whose corporate parents are based in California, don't need the law to show the public how they treat speech that questions gender ideology.

The Google-owned video sharing site throttled the Sept. 6 trailer for a Daily Signal "mini-documentary" about California taking a widow's gender-confused 14-year-old because the mother wouldn't let the girl wear chest binders and men's clothes.

It warns users the 43-second video, released two days before the premiere, "may contain suicide or self-harm topics" based on the unidentified mother quoting her daughter – who has since detransitioned – as saying "I feel suicidal." They must click a button signaling "I wish to proceed," which may explain why the trailer only has 1,000 views as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Meta Oversight Board, which hears disputes over content-moderation decisions on Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram and its X clone Threads, is considering whether to recommend a ban on so-called misgendering under its "Hate Speech Against Marginalized Groups and Gender strategic priorities."

While its request for public comments, which closes Thursday, says its recommendations aren't binding on Meta – the company must simply respond in 60 days – the board says its  decisions are binding in specific appeals from Meta platform decisions on individual users.

Google, Meta and the Meta Oversight Board did not respond to Just the News queries.

YouTube says it "may restrict, rather than remove," self-harm videos that meet one or more non-exhaustive criteria, such as "content meant to be educational," suggesting it actively withheld The Daily Signal video from users who would have otherwise seen it.

The Google platform does not apply the same treatment to more troubling videos, according to The Daily Signal, which was part of the conservative Heritage Foundation until this summer. 

It pointed to unlabeled videos of the late comedian Robin Williams talking about suicide, which use the word twice in the clip and once in the title, and gory animation of a Chinese man who castrated himself at home with scissors to "truly be herself" as a transgender woman.

YouTube took just six hours to tell Variety it "applied the warning interstitial incorrectly" after the latter noted the self-harm warning on the trailer for the Joker sequel, apparently because Lady Gaga's character "makes a finger-gun gesture" and points at her head, The Daily Signal noted.

The conservative publication said it received the self-harm notification at 3:40 a.m Eastern on Sept. 9, several hours after the full nine-minute video premiered, informing the publication that "fellow creators, viewers, or staff, have expressed concern for your safety or well-being." Users can report videos to YouTube for restriction for "dangerous or harmful acts."

"The transgender mob seems to have mass reported the video to YouTube to silence this story of transgender regret," interviewer Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell wrote on X.

Her outlet previously interviewed a Swiss father whose teen daughter was seized by authorities because her parents wouldn't give her puberty blockers, a case that drew Musk's attention. The girl has been living in a Swiss government shelter for more than a year.

Advocates of sex-based rights often use videos to make their case against biological males entering their intimate spaces and athletic competitions, or to simply remind audiences of the plight of women, whatever the motivation of policies against them. Several were published in recent days.

Minnesota-based Alpha News interviewed a state corrections official who quit in protest of the North Star State's policy of housing males in its only women's prison for its video podcast. 

The administration of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee, paid nearly half a million to the legal nonprofit that represented the transgender inmate who sued for transfer to the women's prison. Taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks called it a "sue-and-settle" scheme to circumvent the closely divided Legislature and change public policy through legal arbitration.

The Independent Women's Forum's documentary project released a video Sunday, "Abandoned," featuring Afghan women whose hard-won rights were "tragically stripped … when the Biden-Harris Administration haphazardly withdrew" the U.S military from their country.

They made it to the U.S. the year after the Taliban resumed control, but are now calling on the White House and Congress to "actually recognize the gender apartheid" of the Afghan regime "as a heinous crime against humanity."

The appeals that prompted the Meta board's broader review of its exclusion of misgendering as a violation were based on Facebook and Instagram refusing to remove two videos this year. They each "received thousands of views and reactions" and were "reported for Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment multiple times," according to the board's request for comments.

One featured "a woman confronting a transgender woman for using the women’s bathroom," calling him a man and asking "why it is permitted" for him to be there. It might refer to one of multiple incidents at Planet Fitness locations.

The other showed "a transgender girl winning a female sports competition in the United States, with some spectators vocally disapproving of the result," and the post itself called him "a boy, questioning whether they are female," the board said. 

Such videos are legion across social media in the wake of Lia Thomas's domination of college women's swimming, though Meta said this video pertained to a minor, meaning it's probably not a college setting.

Meta told the board that neither post called for “exclusion or segregation" based on gender identity or represented a "cognizable attack." The first one also qualified for a "newsworthiness allowance," and the second post involved an "involuntary public figure," for which Meta allows "more discussion and debate."

The gender-critical Women's Liberation Front called on its supporters Tuesday to flood the Meta board with comments against a misgendering ban and shared WoLF's own comment.

"The biological distinction between men and women has been the criteria by which women have been discriminated against, excluded from public life, exploited, enslaved, sexually abused, and disenfranchised throughout history," the group wrote. "Women are not asked how they identify or how they see themselves before they experience these things."

WoLF asked the board to recommend Meta "explicitly" permit women to "properly identify the sex of an individual or groups of individuals" and "advocate for women’s single-sex spaces (including in sports)."

Meta platforms should grant "the right to advocate for women's rights," which are in "known conflict" with gender-identity rights, and the right to advocate for lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, particularly "protection from heterosexual biological males who call themselves lesbians."