This week, Twitter silenced another prominent conservative voice — this time, one relied on heavily by parents and older generations distant from today’s social media fads. Libs of TikTok, the social media account that offered parents insight on what the world was exposing to their children through educators and pop culture, was suspended for 12 hours on Twitter. The social media giant said that the account’s content violated rules on hateful conduct: promoting violence against, threatening, or harassing other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliatoin, age, disability, or serious disease.
Effectively, Twitter implemented its “account-level enforcement” of “placing an account in read-only mode.” Twitter noted that it saved these account-level tactics for “particularly egregious” or repeated violations of its rules.
The account launched in November 2020, reposting videos from the Chinese social media app TikTok in order to display a more comprehensive view of the left’s political ideology. It began to pick up more popularity last summer, jumping from under 100 likes to several hundred to thousands within months. The account owner’s identity remains anonymous, but virtual anonymous interviews revealed that the owner is female.
According to social media analyses, Libs of Tiktok’s most-used words included, in order: teacher, students, school, parents, and kids. At the time of her suspension, she had close to 612,000 followers. The highest number of retweets achieved on one tweet revealing that a school nurse was suspended over “transphobic comments” reached over 6,000, while the highest number of likes reached over 26,000 on a clip of Fox News host Tucker Carlson praising her work.
Twitter just censored @libsoftiktok, locking the account for “hateful conduct.”
News of the account’s suspension came from Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee: a satire news company that was banned from Twitter. The satire site’s ban occurred after it published the story, “The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine,” poking fun at the current U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) assistant secretary of health.
As evident, the offending content of both Twitter accounts remain available. However, Twitter stipulated to The Babylon Bee that it must remove the offending tweet before it may access its account. Twitter placed no such stipulation on Libs of TikTok — the suspension functioned as a warning to moderate future content.
AZ Free News has relied on Libs of TikTok and even TikTok itself for our reporting. In October, we discovered that the teacher nominated by Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for a national youth leadership award was pushing the vast majority of popular left-wing political ideologies in her elementary school classroom. Libs of TikTok helped notify Arizonans and the world of the three female students at Arizona State University (ASU) who harassed two fellow students for being white males with perceived conservative attire in their multicultural center.
Most recently, Libs of Tik Tok revealed an American government class at ASU telling students that state efforts to require voter ID, get rid of permanent early voting lists, restrict early voting, remove mail-in voting, and close primaries were forms of voter suppression.
Although Libs of TikTok was banned from Twitter, versions of the account exist elsewhere: Instagram, Rumble, GETTR, YouTube, and Gab.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Last March, Cocopah Middle School Principal Nick Noonan required teachers to attend a training on supporting and affirming LGBTQ+ ideologies in children. Email records show Noonan paid $500 in school funds for the two-hour training, “Safer Spaces,” conducted by the Phoenix chapter of Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national organization pushing LGBTQ+ ideologies onto minors and communities. Noonan characterized the training as professional development in an email obtained by AZ Free News.
The middle school’s GLSEN-affiliated club, Gender & Sexualities Alliance (GSA), club sponsor Laynee Langner requested the training. According to emails obtained by AZ Free News, Langner asked for the training out of concern that some teachers weren’t calling students by their preferred names. Langner advocated for Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) to allow students to wear IDs reflecting their preferred name rather than their given name, which they called a “deadname.”
For intervening on behalf of the children in the deadname debacle, GLSEN Phoenix awarded Langner and her club “GSA of the Year” late last year.
The act of grooming indicates preparing something or someone for a specific objective. In recent decades, that term became associated with the grooming of children for sexual purposes, such as pedophiles preparing children for molestation. Grooming usually happens to minors, but it may also occur with adults. Those who groom, nicknamed “groomers,” attempt to build trust, dependency, and other emotional connections with their target in order to manipulate and exploit them.
Over the last few years, opponents of sexualized K-12 curriculum and activities have identified its proponents as “groomers.”
The Cocopah Middle School “Safer Spaces” training from last March occurred over Zoom, and no recording was made available. However, the GLSEN website offers a 52-page “Safe Space Kit” for educators, which the organization also calls their “Guide to Being an Ally to LGBTQ Students.”
The guide has educators assess their personal beliefs to “dismantl[e] internalized homophobia and transphobia.” It doesn’t broach the topic of educators whose personal beliefs may conflict directly with LGBTQ+ ideologies, such as Christianity. The guide also teaches that sex is fluid, or “gender identity.”
Additionally, the guide instructs educators make it known they support LGBTQ+ children by posting LGBTQ+ materials like stickers and posters in their classroom or office, wearing LGBTQ+ buttons or wristbands, telling other educators they support LGBTQ+ students, reforming their speech to avoid gendered terms like “he” or “she” and instead use “they,” and rebuking anyone who displays “anti-LGBTQ+” behavior. It further instructs educators to hide the information a student discloses to them about their sexual orientation or gender identity from that student’s parents.
Educators are also told that they should incorporate LGBTQ+ ideologies in their curriculum and activities. Activism is encouraged: a checklist asks educators to review their school for LGBTQ+ inclusivity, such as gender-neutral or private bathrooms, transgender-friendly sports teams, and gender-neutral alternatives to Prom King and Queen.
In the concluding portion of the guide, educators are told to make an action plan of their own: how they can support LGBTQ+ students, educate students and staff on LGBTQ+ issues, advocate for relevant changes at their school, and what further resources or help they need to make their action plan possible.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
