Months after partnering with Stonewall and weeks after being accused of “brainwashing” children into trans surgery, a prominent video-sharing service has banned from its platform the “deadnaming” and “misgendering” of individuals who identify as transgender or non-binary.

On Tuesday, February 8, TikTok updated its Community Guidelines to instruct users not to “post, upload, stream, or share: Content that targets transgender or non-binary individuals through misgendering or deadnaming.” To misgender is to use pronouns based on an individual’s sex, rather than declared gender identity. To deadname is to use the name the individual was known as prior to declaring a gender identity.

The change in policy came as part of what TikTok calls an effort to combat “hateful” ideologies.

Another recent change on the platform was the addition of a feature allowing users to add preferred pronouns to their profiles.

In 2020, TikTok signed a partnership with Stonewall, the UK’s embattled queer and transgender charity. Stonewall has influenced hate crime law in England and Wales, and its Diversity Champions scheme has vetted the policies of over 850 organizations in the UK, including the Ministry of Justice, city councils, police departments and institutions of higher learning. The organizations pay thousands each for Stonewall’s guidance, and costs taxpayers at least £600,000 annually.

In late December, the Daily Mail announced that TikTok has been drawing heated criticism from campaigners who say the video-sharing platform allows transgender-identifying influencers to ”brainwash” children by promoting hormonal and surgical modification of sex-based features as “cool.” Critics point to the example of 18-year-old transgender-identifying fashion model Alex Consani, who suggests in a video that has gotten over 2.3 million views that followers are “one estrogen pill away from a glow up.”

Stephanie Arai-Davies of Transgender Trend said at the time that TikTok is “hugely influential and it’s full of videos that portray medical transition as cool and edgy. Gender is seen as the new rebellion.”

Kate Harris of the LGB Alliance said: “It’s no coincidence that the growth of TikTok coincides exactly with the exponential growth of children presenting with gender dysphoria.”

Now TikTok’s new prohibition against “misgendering or deadnaming” have made expression on the platform of views that oppose the gender identity industry more difficult.

GLAAD, an American non-governmental media monitoring organization founded to protest unflattering coverage of LGBT people, and UltraViolet, an advocacy group created to conduct online campaigns for women’s issues, have both applauded TikTok’s new policy.

“When anti-transgender actions like misgendering or deadnaming, or the promotion of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ occur on platforms like TikTok, they create an unsafe environment for LGBTQ people online and too often lead to real world harm,” Kate Ellis, president and chief executive of GLAAD, wrote in a statement.

Bridget Todd, Communications Director of UltraViolet, said in a press release: “TikTok has become a little safer for women, LGBQ and trans people today,” but “it’s clear social media platforms have a long way to go across the board.”