The viral Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” has misgendered at least 14 individuals in 15 of its tweets so far this year, in seeming violation of Twitter’s terms of service, according to a Media Matters review. As of April 13, the 15 tweets that misgendered individuals have received more than 113,000 total engagements.
Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
At least 11 of the individuals who were misgendered by “Libs of TikTok” list their pronouns directly on their TikTok or Twitter account or share their pronouns in their public content. And 3 individuals who were misgendered by the account are public figures whose pronouns have been identified both on public social media accounts and in the national press, including swimmer Lia Thomas and cyclist Emily Bridges. Of the 15 tweets, 11 are still live on the site; while 4 were taken down, 3 of them can be found on the Internet Archive. The 11 live tweets are still gaining interactions.
Of the tweets misgendering individuals, 7 were shared in March, an increase from the 5 posted between the beginning of January and end of February. The tweet with the least engagements (among those that were live for over 24 hours) still received over 1,500 likes, retweets, and replies.
The account also posts targeted attacks on transgender and gender-nonconforming social media users. This harassment includes claims that adults who teach children about LGBTQ identities are “abusive” and claims that being gender-nonconforming or an ally is a “mental illness,” at least one of which has been removed from Twitter for breaking terms of service. Libs of TikTok has also advocated for all openly LGBTQ teachers to be fired and called on its followers to contact schools that are allowing “boys in the girls bathrooms'' and “boys and girls sharing bedrooms on field trips” to express their hostility towards pro-LGBTQ rules.
