Some of the comments in this thread seem intentionally bad-faith or ignorant to how much hate and abuse actually exists on these platforms. The Internet fucking sucks. I stopped using social media because I'm trans and I don't feel like there's a place for me online anymore. No matter where I go, including large platforms like Reddit and Twitter, I'm inevitably subjected to someone expressing their grievances about trans people or the LGBTQ community. There's a part of me that wants to reply and give my perspective, but it's like I can't even have a voice online without the fear of people belittling and harassing me, sending me abusive messages, trying to doxx me, telling me to kill myself or scouring through my profile to try to find whatever they can add to their "cringe compilation" or Kiwifarms thread about how degenerate and disgusting trans people are. My mental health is more important than participating in the shitfest that is online discourse so I just avoid it. I post on Hacker News and a few other places where people are generally respectful, but other than that I've given up on having conversations with strangers online.
I'm an artist and a software dev, I have a lot that I want to share with the world but I don't think I'll ever get the chance to. This world is cruel and these online platforms and social media algorithms amplify that to the point where it feels like the only way to win the game is to not play. Personally, I don't feel one way or the other about online censorship at this point. I think social media has ironically ushered in a culture of anti-social behavior and maybe it's time to move on to something else.
FWIW r/actuallesbians is extremely supportive towards trans women. (I don't know subreddits for trans men) But even then, abusive PMs are still a problem.
LGBT has become political not to the preference of a lot of its members. But the flag has become a political instrument for signaling. Abused against, I guess.
Most of the people I see making LGBT “political” are people outside of our community who feel the need to constantly tell trans people how they feel about us - our pronouns, what gendered bathroom we should use, who we should be able to compete against athletically, whether we were lying as kids, whether or not they would date us. Like ugh, stop. Then you have the daily /r/Cringetopia or /r/HolUp thread that makes it to the front page when the only point of the thread is for grown ass men to take the piss out of some random gay teen on TikTok or no-follower account talking about pronouns on Twitter. What do we have? Selfie threads on /r/lgbt? Threads about how to come out to your parents on /r/asktransgender? Are you serious right now?
The harassment doesn’t even stop when these trolls and communities are banned. They will literally mass create fake accounts with hateful usernames and follow trans users in an attempt to harass them via the notification feed [0]. It’s scary when this happens to you and I think it’s the reason why you mostly see activist types from the trans community on these platforms, because they’re the only people who are willing to put up with this.
That is one side, but the more relevant is that you see the flag to virtue signal. Even arms manufacturers fly it to signal their alleged values. The consequences for LGBT people in nations not really too friendly with western countries is obvious and you need to account for reactionaries and maybe think beyond your bottom line for governmental contracts.
I'm an artist and a software dev, I have a lot that I want to share with the world but I don't think I'll ever get the chance to. This world is cruel and these online platforms and social media algorithms amplify that to the point where it feels like the only way to win the game is to not play. Personally, I don't feel one way or the other about online censorship at this point. I think social media has ironically ushered in a culture of anti-social behavior and maybe it's time to move on to something else.