Trans and gender diverse people have the right to be free from discrimination, harm, violence and abuse on the basis of, or assumptions about, our bodies, gender, or gender presentation.
It is your legal right, enshrined in the Online Safety Act 2021, to be safe from being targeted by online content that is menacing, harassing or offensive.
Online platforms are required to take reasonable steps to minimise cyber-bullying material targeted at Australian children, and cyber abuse material targeted at Australian Adults.
The Australian eSafety Commissioner works to ensure that all online platforms are upholding this law.
Reporting to the eSafety Commissioner
eSafety can assist in removing harmful online content. The Commissioner has the power to issue fines or penalties to the service, platform or person responsible if they don’t remove the content.
For the eSafety Commissioner to take action, the harmful content must be both:
- Intended to cause serious harm, and
- Menacing, harassing or offensive in all the circumstances.
Examples of this content include:
- Being harassed and threatened with violence because of your physical appearance, religion, gender, race, disability, sexual orientation or political beliefs.
- Finding your personal contact details have been made public on a social media service or other online platform in order to scare, harass or attack you.
- Being threatened with serious harm and other people online being encouraged to join in.
- Being stalked and threatened online, particularly in the context of domestic and family violence.
- Being encouraged to harm yourself, especially if you are known to be at particular risk (for example, if you have a mental health condition).
- Repeatedly being sent obscene and threatening messages as part of ongoing harassment.
- Head to https://www. esafety.gov.au/report
- Ensure you have evidence of the abuse from screenshots and as much information about the harmful content as you are able to gather.
- Have a think about what result you are looking for as well. For example, do you want the harmful content removed, the profile suspended etc?
Witnessing and reporting online hate can be difficult and distressing; we encourage you to take care of yourself.
Consider:
- Debriefing with a friend,
- Taking time to do something that makes you feel good, like going for a walk, or listening to music,
- Talking to a professional counsellor or therapist,
- Connecting in with a support service.
Meta’s recent community standards changes
In January 2025, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) released a statement, announcing their intention to alter their community standards.
In their Hateful Conduct section of the community standards Meta now states:
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.” – Meta (2025)
While there are still limitations on certain anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ content, this loophole unfortunately allows people to dehumanise our communities without recourse from Meta. Remember that page/group moderators can still remove content, even if it doesn’t reach Meta’s thresholds.
Even though Meta standards have changed, Australian law has not. In instances where you are unsuccessful in reporting conduct to Meta, you can still follow the steps above and proceed to report it to the Australian eSafety Commissioner.
Further reporting
If the abuse you are facing is escalating, the person is making threats, or you feel unsafe, it is possible to report these incidents to the police.
- Legal advice – for free legal advice or further help reporting a hate crime or hate incident, you can contact a legal service in your State or Territory.
- Anti-Discrimination – if you believe that you have experienced discrimination you may want to make a complaint to the relevant Anti-Discrimination body in your State or Territory (you can call on their contact numbers or visit their website for more information):
- National: Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) / 1300 656 419
- New South Wales (NSW): Anti-Discrimination NSW / 1800 670 812
- Australian Capital Territory (ACT): ACT Human Rights Commission / (02) 6205 2222
- Northern Territory (NT): Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission / (08) 8999 1444
- Queensland (QLD): Queensland Human Rights Commission (QHRC) / 1300 130 670
- South Australia (SA): SA Equal Opportunity Commission / (08) 7322 7070
- Tasmania (TAS): Office of the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner (OADC / 1300 305 062
- Victoria (VIC): Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) / 1300 292 153
- Western Australia (WA): WA Equal Opportunity Commission / 1800 198 149
- Reporting to Police – if you feel safe to do so, you can report all incidents of abuse and/ or violence to the Australian Federal Police. Call the Police Assistance Line on 131 444 to be connected to your local police.
- For those in NSW, if you have experienced a hate incident and have reported this to your local Command/ District but have received a poor response (for example, you have requested a report be made but this has not occurred), you can email sa****@******rg.au for assistance escalating within the NSWPF.
- Please note that the ACON Safety team can only assist when you have first attempted to report or manage the issue directly with your local Command/District.
Things to avoid
- Getting into an argument – be aware that engaging in hate content may result in you being exposed to this content more often due to the nature of social media algorithms.
- Responding to hate with hate – it’s hard to see hate online and not respond emotionally, but causing harm (even to harmful people) won’t help the situation and can only cause further hurt.
Avoiding online abuse
While it’s impossible to completely remove hate and negativity from social media feeds, there are ways of taking action to avoid this content and measures you can take to protect yourself.
- There are methods of filtering comments so that comments containing certain words or phrases will not be shown to you.
- On Instagram, this can be found in the ‘manual filter’ function, and on Facebook, the ‘profanity filter’ tool.
- You can also find browser plug-ins that will let you block content, or replace words with a different word of your choice.
- If someone’s content is routinely upsetting you, unfollow or unfriend, unapologetically.
- If you are unable to unfriend or unfollow certain people in your life, many platforms have ‘mute’ or ‘snooze’ functions, to reduce seeing someone’s content without unfollowing.
- Social media accounts tend to have many privacy settings available. If you are being targeted by hate or abuse, it is recommended to increase the privacy of your account.
- You can control who sees your posts by changing to a private account, hiding your content from certain people, using ‘audience selector’ tools, or posting only to ‘close friends’. These settings can look different, depending on the platform.
For further tips on how to curate a safer feed plus more tips for online safety, check out ACON’s online safety resources.
If you need support, connection, or someone to talk to, we encourage you to reach out. Explore the full list of organisations and services on our dedicated Support Services page to find the help that feels right for you.
References & Links
Online Safety Resources – ACON
Safety Resources – ACON
eSafety Commissioner – LGBTIQ+ Safety Hub
