Meta is allowing OAN host Alison Steinberg to once again violate its community guidelines against hate speech by launching a harassment campaign on TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, encouraging Instagram users to tag Mulvaney in an anti-trans tirade filled with dehumanizing characterizations and vile slurs.
This campaign started after Meta had already been alerted to Steinberg's history of ban evasion and other guideline-violating content. And while Meta took down some of Steinberg’s anti-trans content, the company still allowed some to stay up, including a post referring to trans people as “it.”
Meta gave Steinberg only a slap on the wrist, and now she is continuing to harass trans people on Meta’s watch.
In the reel posted on September 28, Steinberg repeatedly misgendered Mulvaney, referred to her as “it,” and used an anti-trans slur when talking about another trans woman. Meta’s community standards ban the use of slurs and clearly state that referring to any trans person as “it” is a violation of the company’s hate speech policy. Meta has allowed the video to remain accessible for more than five days. As of the morning of October 3, it has been viewed by over 12,000 people.
Steinberg tagged Mulvaney’s Instagram account in the abusive post and then encouraged her viewers to follow suit in an attempt to flood Mulvaney’s notifications with targeted hate and harassment — another apparent violation of the platform’s guidelines.
Meta is aware that Steinberg posts anti-trans content considering Instagram has already reviewed and removed some of it, including multiple violative posts that Media Matters reported earlier in September. However, even after deleting some of Steinberg’s content, the company allowed another reel of her referring to a trans person as “it” to remain on the platform.
Meta has failed to properly remove hate speech from its platform and because of that soft approach, Steinberg has now escalated to encouraging her followers to harass Mulvaney. Meta is failing to enforce its own rules and allowing Steinberg to continue to use Instagram, even though she has proved that she will continue using the platform to harm people.