The report contains sensitive content that may be upsetting for some readers.
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has contributed to the spread of targeted hate against LGBTI people in Poland, Amnesty International said in a new report analyzing the platform’s business model for the first time.
The report, ‘A Thousand Cuts’: Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence Against Poland’s LGBTI Community on X, details how X’s business model and content moderation failings enabled the spread of technology facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV).
“Through inadequate content moderation practices and a lack of human rights due diligence, X has contributed to human abuses against members of Poland’s LGBTI community,” said Alia Al Ghussain, Amnesty International Researcher and Advisor on technology and human rights.
These failures, coupled with the unjustifiable removal of safeguards against harmful speech, means X has now become a breeding ground of content constituting TfGBV.
This has affected LGBTI people’s rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association, non-discrimination and their ability to feel safe in society.
Poland’s LGBTI community has experienced a range of TfGBV on X, including threats of violence, online harassment, doxing (the sharing of a person’s private information online, with malicious intent) and targeted online hate.
This has forced some to stop using the platform due to the fear of being exposed or ostracized.
Prevalence of anti-LGBTI content on X
In partnership with the National Conference on Citizenship’s Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI), researchers set up 32 research accounts which collected 163,048 tweets between 1 March and 31 March 2025.
Analysis of these tweets revealed a high prevalence of anti-LGBTI content on the platform. A sample analysis of 1,387 tweets suggests that homophobic and transphobic content is highly prevalent on X accounts that follow politicians opposed to LGBT rights.
X’s recommender system, the algorithm behind the “For You” timeline, is built around maximizing user engagement. By prioritizing engagement, the algorithm is incentivized to show users content that will generate interaction. Even with safeguards, the recommender system risks leading to the amplification of harmful content that prompts strong reactions to retain a cycle of engagement.
This is also the first time that Amnesty has conducted a human rights-based analysis of X’s business model. It reveals the extent of X’s surveillance-based business model, which relies on invasive data collection about users in order to target them with advertising, like the business-models of other social media platforms.
This business model, combined with poor content moderation policies and practices, leaves the LGBTI community in Poland at great risk of being targeted with content constituting TfGBV.
Impact on individuals
The targeting of LGBTI users on X is linked to their real or perceived gender, sexual orientation or expression.
Aleksandra Herzyk, an artist and asexual woman from Krakow, recounted how targeted hate forced her off the platform after she was harassed for posting about her breast reduction surgery and was incorrectly assumed to be a trans woman.
“The things that you read about yourself – they’re not true but somehow, they stay in your head. It’s like death by a thousand cuts,
Aleksandra Herzyk
“There were people saying that if they saw me in the gym or something, then they will break my bones, that they wished someone would kill me.”
Magda Dropek, a 42-year-old LGBTI and abortion activist, still uses X for her activism, despite the negative effects.
“I’m doing queer activism and political activism on Twitter mostly. I know how important a tool it is when it comes to communication and activism.
“In my experience, if I [or others] write about something queer… very often, what I see is there is a tweet that has 30, 40 likes or five comments, and then after a day or a few hours, there’s like 500 [anti-LGBTI] comments.
“It’s mostly about silencing and to show that this is not your place, your place is to be silent, not to be visible,” she said.
Maja Heban, a 34-year-old trans woman living in Warsaw, said, “Whatever you [other users] can say, it’s okay – comparing LGBT people to animals, to rapists, to pedophiles. Anything goes.”
Role of X in TfGBV
X’s chronic underinvestment in Polish language content moderation significantly contributed to its failure to deal with TfGBV content.
Its own transparency reports shows that it has just two Polish-speaking content moderators – one of them with Polish as their second language.
These two individuals are responsible for covering a population of 37.45 million people and 5.33 million X users.
“This combination of poor resourcing, policy and practice has contributed to X becoming a platform awash with hateful content targeting the LGBTI community,
Alia Al Ghussain.
On 22 August 2024, we wrote to X with questions about the company’s business activities in Poland between 2019 and 2024. X did not respond.
Failure to comply with the Digital Services Act
Under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) such as X must assess and mitigate systemic human rights risks. X’s 2024 risk assessment acknowledged risks of hate and intimidation on the platform but made no mention of LGBTI-specific harms. An independent DSA audit of X’s risk assessment and mitigation measures, covering the year to 23 August 2024 found them to be weak, ineffective and lacking safeguards for algorithmic systems.
X’s repeated shortcomings in Poland demonstrate the company’s failure to address its systemic risks to human rights. The DSA is an important route for accountability and remedy and must be robustly and meaningfully enforced.
Amnesty International wrote again to X on 25 June 2025 to present the allegations in this report and to give X an opportunity to respond, but did not receive any response.
The European Commission must expand its current investigations into X to include the company’s capacity to efficiently address the risk of TfGBV. X must urgently introduce reforms to ensure that it stops contributing to human rights abuses against LGBTI people in Poland, resource Polish language content moderation, and end its surveillance-based business model.
Background
Amnesty has previously looked at how X’s design and policy choices contributed to the spread of false narratives targeting Muslims and migrants in the UK and how the platform became a place where violence and abuse against women flourishes.
In 2019 Amnesty International published a groundbreaking report showing how the surveillance-based business models of Google and Meta threaten human rights. It concluded that the two companies’ business models were “inherently incompatible” with a range of human rights.
The post Poland: Twitter/X facilitated spread of anti-LGBTI hatred and harassment appeared first on Amnesty International.
