Facebook: The popular spot to be comfortably gay

FACEBOOK may have been a popular place to unload on or mock NSW Premier Mike Baird about Sydney’s infamous lockout laws this week, but doesn’t compare to its popularity as a place to identify as part of the LGBT community, according to data released on Tuesday.

 In honour of the social media giant partnering with Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras this year, researchers gathered and tallied data on how platforms like theirs gave momentum to people connecting and sharing within and with the LGBT community.

The data revealed that more Australians than ever are changing their “interested in” field on Facebook to reveal their same sex attraction. At the end of 2015, the number of LGBT people coming out on the platform each day was almost double what it was a few months prior.

Not only are more and more Australians using Facebook to publicly come out of the closet, they are also using it more to join prominent LGBT pages. Last year saw an increase of people liking LGBT pages by 20 per cent.

Growth in liking these pages spiked during certain international events, including the US Supreme Court decision in favour of same sex marriage as well as the successful referendum in Ireland.

Today, more than a quarter of all supporters of these Australian LGBT pages are international, from over 200 countries. The top 10 nationalities are the US, the UK, Thailand, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan.

Finally, Facebook researchers found the term “marriage equality” was the sixth most talked about topic globally. In Australia, it came in at 11th.