The film purports to feature

The film purports to feature young people who sought gender affirming care, but now regret doing so. PragerU calls the short documentary its “most important” video yet, but extensive research shows that detransitioning is incredibly uncommon. In a 2021 review of 27 studies, with almost 8,000 transgender patients, less than 1% of people who underwent any type of gender-affirmation surgeries expressed regret.

 

In spite of research indicating that these procedures are often life-saving and rarely result in regret, right-wing figures continue to drum up panic around gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ people. In 2023 alone, state legislators have introduced over 400 anti-trans bills.

 

The PragerU campaign comes at a troubled time for X’s ad business. X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims that the company will be profitable by 2024, but other evidence shows that the platform’s advertising business continues to suffer. Insider Intelligence estimates that X will make $1.89 billion from ads this year, a 54% decrease from 2022. Reports from Similarweb, a market intelligence firm, show that X’s traffic and monthly active users have also declined.

 

PragerU said it spent $1 million in total to promote the “DETRANS” documentary, a portion of which went toward its “timeline takeover” on X. So, for a front-and-center, day-long ad placement, X is earning a maximum of 0.053% of its estimated annual advertising earnings.

 

Despite pushback from some users on X, the company confirmed that PragerU’s advertisements do not violate platform guidelines.

 

The ad on X cannot be dismissed, even if a user has the advertiser PragerU’s account blocked. Typically, ads on X can be reported, but this one cannot be flagged.

 

PragerU is also advertising its documentary on Meta and Google, albeit in a far less prominent placement. The organization claimed that it sought a similar “takeover” ad placement on YouTube, which is part of Google, but was denied.