Twitter Releases Safety Calendar Outlining Plans to Combat Online Abuse, Harassment and Violent Groups

Following its plan to combat online abuse, harassment and violent groups, Twitter on Thursday released a safety calendar.

The Safety Calendar has almost similar contents to what the internal email had listed out.

However, under non-consensual nudity, the company has expanded its scope of  definition to include “creep shots” and “hidden camera content”. The company also declared that users whose accounts have been suspended for abuse will be able to appeal the verdict, and will provide a detailed explanation of reasons behind the suspension if it was called for. These new rules will come into effect as soon as October 27.

As part of the schedule,Twitter in November will start notifying suspended users over email, and will suspend accounts of groups or organizations that use violence as a means to advance their cause. The company also plans to update its media policy to include “hateful imagery and hate symbols”.

This means that avatars and headers with hateful imagery and symbols or tweets that contain the same will be filtered. Examples of such content will be provided once the policy has been finalised, the company says. Twitter will also stop people from signing up with hateful display names starting November 22.

Twitter has been removing content that include violent threats or wishes of serious harm, but the company will now expand that to include content that glorifies or condones “acts of violence that result in death or serious physical harm.”

Also, come December and January the company plans to roll out a smarter witness report review process, and will also implement past relation interaction signals to determine if an exchange is consensual or non-consensual.

Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey on Wednesday tweeted,”We just decided to share our internal safety work streams & shipping calendar.

“This makes us feel uncomfortable because it’s a work in progress & rough, but it’s the right thing to do: we believe showing our thinking and work in real-time will help build trust.”

Twitter has been under fire for allowing abusive and hateful behavior on its platform, which has 328 million users. Some particularly ugly episodes occurred last year when a hate mob attacked Leslie Jones, a star of the “Ghostbusters” movie. The blowback against the social media company culminated last Friday in a high-profile #WomenBoycottTwitter protest.

In a series of tweets over the past week, Dorsey has promised changes are on the way.

“We’re updating our approach to make Twitter a safer place,” the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. “This won’t be a quick or easy fix, but we’re committed to getting it right. Far too often in the past we’ve said we’d do better and promised transparency but have fallen short in our efforts. Starting today, you can expect regular, real-time updates about our progress.”