Misgendered During Moderation: How Transgender Bodies Make Visible Cisnormative Content Moderation Policies and Enforcement in a Meta Oversight Board Case

Abstract

Transgender and nonbinary social media users experience disproportionate content removals on social media platforms, even when content does not violate platforms’ guidelines. In 2022, the Oversight Board, which oversees Meta platforms’ content moderation decisions, invited public feedback on Instagram’s removal of two trans users’ posts featuring their bare chests, introducing a unique opportunity to hear trans users’ feedback on how nudity and sexual activity policies impacted them. We conducted a qualitative analysis of 83 comments made public during the Oversight Board’s public comment process. Commenters criticized Meta’s nudity policies as enforcing a cisnormative view of gender while making it unclear how images of trans users’ bodies are moderated, enabling the disproportionate removal of trans content and limiting trans users’ ability to use Meta’s platforms. Yet there was significant divergence among commenters about how to address cisnormative moderation. Some commenters suggested that Meta clarify nudity guidelines, while others suggested that Meta overhaul them entirely, removing gendered distinctions or fundamentally reconfiguring the platform’s relationship to sexual content. We then discuss how the Oversight Board’s public comment process demonstrates the value of incorporating trans people’s feedback while developing policies related to gender and nudity, while arguing that Meta must go beyond only revising policy language by reevaluating how cisnormative values are encoded in all aspects of its content moderation systems.