LinkedIn removes deadnaming and misgendering clause from hateful content policy
Linkedin has quietly removed protection for trans people in their terms of service (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Linkedin has quietly removed protection for trans people in their terms of service (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
LinkedIn has quietly removed a clause prohibiting deadnaming and misgendering from its community-wide hateful content policy.
Networking and employment company LinkedIn has edited the ‘Hateful and Derogatory Content’ segment of its Professional Community Policies to remove a clause to do with misgendering and deadnaming trans people.
Misgendering is the act of referring to a trans person as their birth gender, rather than the gender they identify with, and deadnaming is the act of referring to a trans person with their birth name, rather than their chosen one.
The change to LinkedIn’s policy was first noticed by nonprofit Open Terms Archive, an organisation dedicated to publicly recording every version of terms of digital service for companies.
According to the nonprofit, LinkedIn now does not list the act of “misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals” as an example of “prohibited conduct” in the ‘Hateful and Derogatory Content’ section.
An archived version of the terms lists the above acts as hateful and derogatory; the line was removed 28 July.
“Content that attacks, denigrates, intimidates, dehumanizes, incites or threatens hatred, violence, prejudicial or discriminatory action” is still considered hateful, according to the terms, due to people’s “actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or disability status.”
A spokesperson for LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group GLAAD told The Advocate: “LinkedIn’s quiet decision to retract longstanding, best-practice hate speech protections for transgender and nonbinary people is an overt anti-LGBTQ move — and one that should alarm everyone.
“Following Meta and YouTube earlier this year, yet another social media company is choosing to adopt cowardly business practices to try to appease anti-LGBTQ political ideologues at the expense of user safety.”
A spokesperson for LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, told the same publication in a statement: “We regularly update our policies. Personal attacks or intimidation toward anyone based on their identity, including misgendering, violates our harassment policy and is not allowed on our platform.” They also pointed towards “gender identity” still being a protected characteristic.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and more, changed its Hateful Conduct policy in January 2025 and received huge backlash, as the changes allowed users to to call LGBTQ+ people mentally ill, simply because of their sexuality.
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