Musk Clarifies Silent Change In ‘Misgendering’ Policy

On Saturday, X, formerly Twitter, CEO Elon Musk clarified that the website would not be reinstating a policy that would punish users for potentially misgendering others, sharing that the misunderstanding came from a court ruling in a foreign country.

It started as right-wing podcaster Tim Pool shared on Friday that he “will be terminating all ad spend commitments and verified accounts over X reinstating the misgendering policy.”

Pool stated that he “just deleted a 25k ad campaign” and “were planning 200k for March,” both down the drain over the policy change.

Musk then replied to the podcaster, clarifying that the change was “due to a court judgment in Brazil, which is being appealed, but should not apply outside of Brazil.”

Another user had previously asked the X owner if he would “reverse the Pronoun policy on X because it will definitely lead to censorship on this platform.” Musk responded he was “looking into it.”

Brazil ruled in 2019 that homophobia was considered a hate crime within the country, which is punishable with prison time, which very likely caused the lawsuit between the country and the social media company.

A recent report by The Hill that was shared by the podcaster outlined the change in rules on the platform, noting that the policy was first undone when Musk overtook the company but seems to have changed.

The abuse and harassment rules on the platform had been silently changed to “reduce the visibility of posts that purposefully use different pronouns to address someone other than what that person uses for themselves, or that use a previous name that someone no longer goes by as part of their transition.”

It also stated that the social media website “must always hear from the target to determine if a violation has occurred,” causing concern that unfair silencing may occur on the website.

Despite Pool’s initial frustration with the silent rule change, he ultimately praised Musk for having an “owner that treats you like a customer and tries to engage and make it better,” thanking the X CEO for doing so.

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