Twitter has said that it will take “less severe actions” in the future against accounts that break the rules. Accounts will only be suspended for “severe or ongoing, repeat violations.” Not only that, it also said that, beginning on February 1st, anyone can appeal a suspension, and that those who do so will be evaluated based on new criteria.
What other options does Twitter have besides temporarily suspending your account? Twitter has been taking “less severe actions” for years, such as reducing a tweet’s visibility or requiring a user to delete a tweet before they can log in again.
Now, Twitter says it will use those other measures more often before resorting to banning an account.
In addition, the company has stated that it will be releasing new features next month to aid in the transparency of its enforcement actions, though these have yet to be specified.
For instance, Twitter’s CEO Elon Musk vowed last year that the platform would inform users when they had been “shadowbanned” and give them an explanation for the decision.
It all started in December of last year when the Twitter Safety account tweeted that they had found multiple policies “where permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules.”
Musk had announced in November last year that accounts banned for reasons other than illegal content or “egregious spam” would be granted “general amnesty” on the site.
To date, this has led to the restoration of several prominent profiles, including those of Donald Trump, Kathy Griffin, Jordan Peterson, MyPillow co-founder Mike Lindell, The Babylon Bee, and Nick Fuentes. Less than a day after being reinstated, Fuentes was again banned.
Twitter appears to defend its reinstatement decisions by claiming it “did not reinstate accounts that engaged in illegal activity, threats of harm or violence, large-scale spam and platform manipulation, or when there was no recent appeal to have the account reinstated.”
Considering that in 2021 Twitter said it permanently suspended the former president “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the fact that he has been allowed back on is rather strange. While this may be the case, it’s also possible that Elon decided to reinstate Trump after surveying his own audience, much like the original impetus for the amnesty policy.
