Twitter under fire for letting Elliot Page’s deadname trend despite anti-hate policy

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Twitter is under fire after letting Elliot Page’s deadname trend despite its policies against hateful conduct.

Page’s deadname (the name he used before coming out as trans) trended for approximately 45 minutes on Tuesday (5 July).

Twitter’s policy on hate conduct prohibits users from “targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanise, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.”

“This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” the policy states.

However, enough users deadnamed the Umbrella Academy star that his deadname appeared as “trending”.

While trending topics are determined by Twitter’s algorithm, the social network says it “may not allow or may temporarily prevent content from appearing in Trends until more context is available” if the topic violates its rules.

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Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy told Buzzfeed that allowing Elliot Page’s deadname to trend was a mistake and one that Twitter rectified.

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Kennedy said: “The term you referenced should not have been allowed to appear in trends, and it has since been removed and prohibited from appearing in trend.

Our teams are constantly evaluating our internal processes for mitigating this from happening.”

This news comes after Jordan Peterson posted an anti-trans tweet deadnaming Elliot Page, and referring to them with their previous pronouns.

Peterson was briefly suspended, and the tweet is no longer available. The suspension, however, led to a wave of anti-trans hate directed at Page, which led to more deadnaming.

Twitter has previously had issues with adhering to its own policies. In 2018, the phrase “Kill all Jews” appeared as a trend, Buzzfeed noted.