Twitter Begins Enforcement of New Rules Against Hate Speech and Violent Contents

Users might have to be careful of what they tweet as Twitter announced its plans to begin enforcing the new rules it made last month to clamp down on hate speech, violent and abusive contents.

The new rules which have started taken effect today underlines the efforts taken by social media companies to curb offensive contents on their sites.

“Today, we will start enforcing updates to the Twitter Rules announced last month to reduce hateful and abusive content on Twitter,” Twitter said on Monday.

The company said the new rules will require any accounts associated with groups that promote violence against civilians either on or off the social media platform to remove all tweets that promote glorify violent acts.

In a blog post titled “Enforcing New Rules to Reduce Hateful Conduct and Abusive Behavior,” the Twitter Safety Team focused on two new policies related to violence and physical harm. Beginning today, “accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence” will be held accountable for violating the Twitter Rules, as will anyone who posts “content that glorifies violence or the perpetrators of a violent act.” Twitter says offending Tweets will need to be taken down. If there is a second offense, the account in question will be permanently suspended.

In addition to enforcing new rules, Twitter is also expanding the meaning of other rules. For example, accounts that post abusive or threatening materials in their profile information — this includes your username and bio — will be permanently suspended. The company says violent threats as well as “multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, [and anything that] incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human” constitute abusive behavior.

Also,posting hateful imagery in your profile or header images will not result in suspension, but will be required to be removed. This includes, “logos, symbols, or images whose purpose is to promote hostility and malice against others based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.”

The social media company however feels there is still much to be done though the enforement of the new rules indicates a step in the right direction.

Also the company has vowed to permanently suspend from Twitter  anyone who refuses to comply.

Not slacking in its resolve to enforce the new rules Twitter has already suspended the accounts of the leader and deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group recently retweeted by Donald Trump, under the terms of its revised anti-abuse rules.