Twitter to Take Drastic Actions Against Hate Groups and Symbols

Twitter can be a vicious platform when it comes to trolls, hate speech and abuse on the internet.

In a bid to stop this the company on Tuesday outlined its policy changes in an email to its Trust & Safety Council just days after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey promised there would be more aggressive rules coming to Twitter.

The email details where the policy updates stand — including plans to treat hateful imagery and hate symbols on the platform as “sensitive media.”

Relating to adult content and graphic violence on the platform, the content will be blurred and individuals will need to manually opt to view.  However, what Twitter considers to be a hate symbol was not clarified in the email.

Twitter also has two other categories in its crosshairs: Violent groups or organizations that use or have historically used violence to advance their causes, as well as tweets that “glorify” or “condone” violence. The company says that it already takes action against threats like “I’m going to kill you” (though how effective it has been at doing this has been up for debate).

Moreover, as part of the policy update, it said it will soon take action against tweets that are perhaps more vague, but no less threatening, such as “Murdering makes sense. That way they won’t be a drain on social services.”

The company, which is toeing a sensitive line as it works to police harassment on its platform while positioning itself as a service that celebrates free speech, notes these three new categories will be fleshed out in more detail. It said it plans to roll out the finalized updates in the coming weeks.

Twitter said in a statement, “Although we planned on sharing these updates later this week, we hope our approach and upcoming changes, as well as our collaboration with the Trust and Safety Council, show how seriously we are rethinking our rules and how quickly we’re moving to update our policies and how we enforce them.”

This clampdown comes after an outcry from users last week when actress Rose McGowan’s account was temporarily blocked for violating Twitter polices. Twitter said she tweeted a phone number. McGowan had been very engaged on the platform in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, posting tweets including an accusation that Weinstein raped her. And users weren’t happy. Many reacted to her suspension with a hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter.

This is just the latest complaint against the company, though, which has long been criticized for not taking effective action against hate speech and harassment on its platform.

In addition to the new categories outlined in the email, Twitter also plans to make significant updates to existing policies around non-consensual nudity and unwanted sexual advances on the platform.

According to Twitter on non-consensual nudity the email reads, “we will immediately and permanently suspend any account we identify as the original poster/source of non-consensual nudity and/or if a user makes it clear they are intentionally posting said content to harass their target. We will do a full account review whenever we receive a Tweet-level report about non-consensual nudity. If the account appears to be dedicated to posting non-consensual nudity then we will suspend the entire account immediately.”

While on unwanted sexual advances, it said, “we are going to update the Twitter Rules to make it clear that this type of behavior is unacceptable. We will continue taking enforcement action when we receive a report from someone directly involved in the conversation. Once our improvements to bystander reporting go live, we will also leverage past interaction signals (eg things like block, mute, etc) to help determine whether something may be unwanted and action the content accordingly.”

Notably, any individual can report something they suspect is non-consensual intimate photo of someone: “Given that people appearing in this content often do not know the material exists, we will not require a report from a target in order to remove it,” the email reads. It will also widen the scope of what is considered non-consensual nudity to include “creep shots,” or images taken with cameras angled up a person’s skirt.

Twitter’s head of policy wrote, “We realize that a more aggressive policy and enforcement approach will result in the removal of more content from our service.

“We are comfortable making this decision, assuming that we will only be removing abusive content that violates our Rules. To help ensure this is the case, our product and operational teams will be investing heavily in improving our appeals process and turnaround times for their reviews.”