Being on social media is a bit like being at the park. There are all sorts of people there, some might be having conversations you don’t want to hear and some might try to talk to you when you don’t wish to talk to them. The simple answer in that situation is to walk away. In the world of social media, the mute and block functions are the equivalent of walking away from someone you don’t wish to talk to or who is being unpleasant. Deleting a hateful comment is the equivalent of cleaning hateful graffiti off the park bench – we’ve seen it and nobody else needs to.
It is our policy to block and report people who make transphobic comments on our social media posts. To minimise the amount of transphobia our volunteers have to deal with, we also block people have transphobic content in their bio or feed. On Instagram and Facebook we delete transphobic comments so that nobody else has to read them. Read the TransActual definition of transphobia.
We do the same for racists, ableists, sexists and other assorted bigots. But we will absolutely call someone out on that behaviour before we block them.
We encourage our social media followers not to engage with bigots in the comments on our posts. For the sake of our volunteers, we will mute such interactions.