Provided by Matt Skallerud
The notion of celebrating our nation’s Independence seems almost quaint and retro these days while the country is under siege by politicians who have conveniently forgotten that our Founders fought and died for the principles of life, liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness for all. But we all love a good party and a day off from work, so celebrate we do.
My celebration ended insanely early on the 4th. At exactly 6:30am Eastern Time, over 250 profiles from Pink Media and the #ILoveGay Network were banned on X (formerly Twitter). WTF????? It appears that this mass suspension was based on what they cited as a “user report” claiming we had broken one of the X rules. Which rule we may have violated remains a mystery.
Interestingly, our profiles, including ones that were more business-focused and not part of the #ILoveGay network, and a few profiles that hadn’t been used in years, all became suspended at the same exact moment, which can only really be done internally by X. It’s pretty clear that someone inside X had done their homework and this was a well-researched, well-prepared and very intentional takedown of a network of LGBTQ+ X profiles that had well over 1 million followers worldwide. We have also discovered X took down a wide variety of LGBTQ+ tourism profiles, including some very specific to Palm Springs: @GayDesertGuide, @ILoveGayPalmSprings, @OMGPSP, as well as national and international tourism sites like FunMaps, Visit Britain’s GayBritain account and many more.
As my friend and colleague, CEO of Gay Desert Guide Brad Fuhr, put it, this chilling development “affects our ability to conduct business and tears at the fabric of our first amendment rights. This is an erosion of our progress made over the past few decades and cannot be taken lightly. We will fight in the court of public opinion, scream and shout as only we can, and, in the end, we fervently believe that decency and common sense will prevail.”
Since the 4th, we have received numerous emails, DMs and texts from LGBTQ+ folks from around the world asking us what happened. We are grateful and energized by the outpouring of love and support and will use that as our fuel to fight like hell in the coming weeks and months.
Now, we know some of you might be rolling your eyes and wondering why we even stayed on X in the first place, while so many leading LGBTQ+ organizations had already left the platform. For us, the answer was simple: We were reaching an LGBTQ+ audience around the world that could not be reached with the same impact on Facebook, Instagram, Threads or TikTok.
Each of our profiles spoke to a very specific LGBTQ+ audience, both regionally or thematically. Each profile stayed true to that audience, engaging with and sharing content that was specific to that region or theme. It operated like a Facebook or LinkedIn Group, and it amplified LGBTQ+ voices around the world and helped bring greater visibility and awareness to LGBTQ+ individuals, influencers, organizations and newsmakers worldwide.
We were never the loudest nor even the strongest voice in these communities, we were simply an engaged participant with some of the various LGBTQ+ posts and conversations that mattered, helping to take a post with perhaps only a small handful of viewers and impressions, and elevating that post to a wider yet still targeted LGBTQ+ audience.
As we began to examine what was going on, we realized that we had a particularly strong month in June 2024, coinciding with Pride celebrations throughout the nation and enhanced visibility in conventional media. As a result, more clients wanted to collaborate with us to reach a wider audience.
One of our clients had a simple advertising campaign targeting our audience on #ILoveGay Music. With our organic reach, coupled with some targeted advertising dollars, those posts went viral, reaching an audience with over 17 million video views. This kind of performance is nearly impossible to achieve on any other platform when the budget is $5,000 or less, and it was this kind of performance we were getting really good at achieving with our #ILoveGay X strategy of simply staying engaged with our followers online.
Perhaps it was the strength of this campaign that got us on the X radar. Or perhaps it was the exposure we received in the LGBTQ+ news cycle in June 2024, where we were interviewed for a few articles that focused on corporate America. We shared our opinion that it appeared that several major corporations were sitting comfortably on the sidelines when it came to LGBTQ+ promotions and advertising in 2024. We wondered aloud whether that was a disturbing trend that needed to be called out. Several right-wing blogs took some of these interview clips and rebutted that companies should focus on business and stay out of politics. We were interviewed on NewsNation TV about this very topic and countered that perhaps bad politics should stay out of business. The situation in Florida when the governor enacted his “Don’t Say Gay” agenda onto companies such as Disney being a prime and most visible example. Perhaps it was this exposure that got us on the X radar.
Whatever it was, immediately after June 2024, where we were engaged with, and shared, a strong volume of amazing LGBTQ+ pride content from around the world, we were shut down in a way that was not random and was not the byproduct of simply a user-generated complaint about violating X rules. This was a targeted and deliberate shutdown from inside of X, of a network of LGBTQ+ profiles that had become a major and arguably, life-changing part of amplifying LGBTQ+ voices across the US and around the world.
Some of our strongest and most engaged profiles were outside the US, in places including India, Thailand, Latin America, and especially the UK. Some of our strongest themed profiles included sports, film, books and music, as well as both the transgender and the gay male “bear” community worldwide. Transgender voices in particular have been under attack daily, and we countered by playing our part in helping to ensure that those voices reached others in our LGBTQ+ community, while employing a successful strategy of ignoring the hate and the trolls. Most of their negative comments simply faded away once they realized we would not engage with them in any meaningful way.
So where do things stand now?
Of course, we’re hopeful that our #ILoveGay network on X can be restored so that we can continue to help elevate and amplify LGBTQ+ voices yet again. However, we realize that during this divisive and politically-charged year, we may have gotten too effective in our reach and exposure on a platform that is owned by an individual who has it made abundantly clear he wants to suppress LGBTQ+ voices. It might also be time to accept the fact that in this era of emboldened autocrats and kings, we’ll have to be even more creative in how we continue to keep these voices alive and at the forefront now that it is more critical than ever.
We wanted you to know what was happening, how egregiously awful it is, and how this might just be the beginning of the fight of our lifetimes (Project 2025, anyone?) We are hard at work on strategies to raise awareness of this outrageous attempt to make our community disappear. THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN. With your help, we will shout to the rooftops and engage media, nationally and internationally, to let them know we will NEVER again be marginalized or dismissed.
Palm Springs has always been at the epicenter of everything that is special about the LGBTQ+ community. We are grateful for your support and will be back in touch shortly with ideas on how you can help us combat the hateful agenda of X and everyone else who dares to deny us of the freedoms that we always thought were guaranteed to us by our country’s hard-fought independence.