#WeBelong – Twitter celebrates Pride Month 2022
Twitter shows support with enhanced features to help LGBTQIA+ community say #WeBelong on the service
MANILA, 16 JUNE 2022 – People come to Twitter to connect with their communities, be their authentic and true selves, and talk about what’s happening. On Twitter, conversations about Pride Month grew by 76%* in the past year – from discussing Netflix’s romantic comedy Heartstopper to celebrating courageous moments, the LGBTQIA+ community and allies are showing up for one another on Twitter.
This year, we honour Pride Month with the hashtag #WeBelong. For all of the progress that the queer community has made in recent years, efforts to exclude, erase, and degrade them persist. #WeBelong is a call for queers to take up space and be loud in places where they’ve been told they don’t belong or made to feel unsafe in.
Our purpose is to serve the public conversation, and we have rules to ensure all people can participate in public conversation freely from behaviours that discourage people from expressing themselves, such as our hateful conduct policy where people cannot promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and more.
We just launched our new reporting flow that makes it easier for people to report unhealthy and unwanted content via our redesigned process. After testing this feature in the US last year, we saw the number of actionable reports increased by 50%. At every stage of Twitter’s research and design process, the team intentionally included people from marginalised communities — women, people of color, and people from the LGBTQIA+ community, including those who identify as trans or nonbinary.
Here are some more ways to be in control of your Twitter experience:
- Choose who can reply to your Tweets in conversation settings so you can engage in more meaningful conversations and avoid unwelcome replies.
- Hide replies you believe are off-topic or spammy and detracts from the conversation.
- Muting words, phrases, usernames, emojis, and hashtags that may be abusive and cause uncomfortable experiences on Twitter.
- Block accounts feature that helps in restricting specific accounts from contacting people, seeing their Tweets, and becoming followers.
We recognise that there’s more we can do to make this a place where everyone in the LGBTQIA+ community can eagerly say #WeBelong. We’re testing more ways for a safer experience on Twitter:
- Twitter Circle allows people to only show their Tweets to people they’ve picked.
- Safety Mode aims to automatically block accounts that appear to violate Twitter Rules or might be using insults, name-calling, strong language, or hateful remarks. It’s meant to proactively keep you safe from unwanted interactions.
- Prompts to reconsider Tweet replies containing harmful language. Our tests for this feature are seeing promising results, with people changing or deleting their replies over 30% of the time when prompted for English users in the U.S. and around 47% of the time for Portuguese users in Brazil.
LGBTQIA+ people to follow on Twitter
| Alexa Asahina (@alexaasahina) |
Alexa Asahina (@alexaasahina) is a model, live streamer, and pro player. She is the Queen of Tekken Philippines in 2020 and creates video game content with games such as Tekken and League of Legends. |
| Marina Summers (@marinaxsummers) |
Marina Summers (@marinaxsummers) is a drag artist based in Manila, in which her persona reflects her love for the beach. She is a co-founder of Drag Playhouse PH. Maximizing her platform as TV producer, she creates content about the LGBTQI+ community to spread awareness. She is also a singer and does song covers, but in 2020, Marina released her debut song “I Have Arrived” on iTunes and Spotify. “As a drag queen, I use Twitter to connect not only with my followers but also different members of the community. And by joining conversations or sharing Tweets, I get to know more about the many colorful stories from the different facets of the LGBTQIA+ community.” Marina also shared that one of her favourite queer moments on Twitter was when her Tweet, about her conversation with her mom teasing each other, went viral and a lot find it cute and candid. She shared, “And as queer person who grew up with the full support and acceptance from my mom, I think it’s important to share moments like these on Twitter to inspire other people that parent-child relationships like these should be the norm.” |
| Paolo Pangilinan (@paopangs) |
Paolo Pangilinan (@paopangs) is a Filipino actor, student-doctor, and athlete. He is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, and he is an advocate for SOGIE Equality, HIV Awareness, and for more queer representation and stories in media. |
| Phi Palmos (@phipalmos) |
Phi Palmos (@phipalmos) is queer actor for stage, film, and television. Best known in the local theater scene for his works on productions such as “Dekada 70”, “Ang Huling El Bimbo”, and “Rak of Aegis;” he is also a Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival 2019 Best Supporting Actor nominee for the film “Sila-Sila,” and 2015 Metro Manila Film Festival’s Best Picture “Walang Forever.” Celebrating pride month is significant for him because it highlights and amplifies the advocacy and the true history of Pride. For Phi, this is an avenue for him to elevate discussion on different issues that the community is facing. When asked about his Pride hero, Phi said, “(It’s) Harvey Milk because of how he fought for our place when no one was giving us anything and when it is so natural for us to be ignored and blind-sided. My heroes are the my trans sisters who have cradled and took good care of me when I was growing up as a young gay femme kid.” |
| Rica Salomon (@RicaSalomon) |
Rica Salomon (@RicaSalomon) is a Filipina vlogger born and raised in the Philippines. She is a digital creator, makeup artist, founder and Chief Operating Officer of Kayu Beauty PH together with her friends, and a proud Trans Woman. Beauty pageants is one of the events she looks forward to as she loves how creative and witty we can be. Rica believes that Pride Month is important because it is more than just a celebration, it is a protest. The community stands together, and fights towards equality and freedom for everyone. “Twitter is a safe space for me to rant or share my 2 cents on things. I’ve always used Twitter to share momentous moments in my life or to react to a certain issue where I can freely share my thoughts on things,” Rica shared. |
| Roanne Carreon (@racarreon) |
Roanne Carreon (@racarreon) is a social media manager and creator. She is a founder of Queer Safe Spaces (@queersafespaces), an online safe space for queer people and straight allies. This community aims to educate, empower, and support Filipino queer through advocacting gender equality and providing them with equal opportunities. |
| Tina Boado (@inaurner) |
Tina Boado (@inaurner) is a queer digital creator, writer, an enterpreneur, an advocate for SOGIE Equality. Tina is the owner of Kloseta PH (@klosetaph), the newest gender-neutral & gender-inclusive local apparel. |
This Pride Month, as we celebrate at parades across the region in-person or virtually, we must remember that our support for the LGBTQIA+ community needs to happen every month.
*Source: Brandwatch, Global Tweets, 1 Jan 2021–31 May 2021 vs 1 Jan 2022–31 May 2022
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