• by Colin Kirkland , December 15, 2023

The social messaging and live-streaming platform, which is especially popular among gamers, defines hate speech as “any expression that degrades, vilifies, or dehumanized individuals, incites intense feelings of hostility towards defined groups, or promotes harm based on protected characteristics.”

The new policy prohibiting deadnaming and misgendering is not exactly new. It was internally adopted last year, but is only being made public now due to the platform's goal of providing more transparency to its users.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure Discord remains a safe and fun place for people to hang out with friends, we continually evaluate potential harms and update our policies,” said a Discord spokesperson. “We often work with organization and subject matter experts to ensure our policies accurately encompass a holistic view of how these issues manifest across the internet and society.”

The LGBT organization GLAAD applauded Discord in a recent action calling more social

networks to update their policies to protect transgender and nonbinary users.

With its new policy update, Discord has joined TikTok as the second leading social-media platform to explicitly prohibit intentional misgendering and deadnaming, while other platforms like X have actually rolled back their protection policies for trans users.

The platform formerly known as Twitter was the first social app to implement a rule against mistreatment of transgender users. However, after Elon Musk took over the company, the clause in its hateful conduct policy was quietly removed.

Since then, anti-trans content has not only spiked on X, but has been publicly supported and proliferated by Musk himself. Last month, the X owner provided a top advertising spot to conservative media nonprofit Prager University Foundation for its misinformed anti-trans film, with the ad hashtag “#detrans.”

Discord says it will ban users who violate its hateful conduct policy only after the platform weighs in on the particular violation. The platform typically issues a warning before a ban and judges by the “severity of harm” done. Accounts with one or more violation will be labeled “at risk.”