Twitter launches its hate speech clampdown

Twitter has today started its promised clampdown on hate speech, enforcing new rules to reduce what it calls ‘hateful conduct and abusive behaviour’.

They include new rules on violence and physical harm. In a blog post, the company reaffirmed that specific threats of violence or wishing for serious physical harm, death, or disease to an individual or group of people is in violation of its policies, and said its rules now include more types of related content such as accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.

“Groups included in this policy will be those that identify as such or engage in activity — both on and off the platform — that promotes violence” the post said. It adds that the policy does not apply to military or government entities and that it will consider exceptions for groups that are currently engaging in (or have engaged in) peaceful resolution.

The new rules also cover content that glorifies violence or the perpetrators of a violent act. This includes celebrating any violent act in a manner that may inspire others to replicate it, or any violence where people were targeted because of their membership of a protected group. “We will require offending Tweets to be removed and repeated violations will result in permanent suspension” the post stated.

Twitter is also expanding its hateful conduct policy and rules against abusive behaviour to include related content. Previously, the rules prohibited promoting violence against or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of their group characteristics, as well as engaging in abusive behaviour that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another person’s voice.

Twitter is now broadening these policies to include additional types of related content and conduct. These include any account that abuses or threatens others through their profile information, including their username, display name, or profile bio.

If an account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human, it will be permanently suspended. Twitter said it plans to develop internal tools to help it identify violating accounts to supplement user reports.

Additionally, hateful imagery will now be considered sensitive media under Twitter’s media policy. 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.”

Twitter said that if this type of content appears in header or profile images, we will now accept profile-level reports and require account owners to remove any violating media.”

Twitter conceded that in its efforts to be more aggressive, it may make some mistakes, and said it is working on a robust appeals process.  Nonetheless, it seems to have got on with the task of enforcing the new rules. According to a report in the Independent, Paul Golding, leader of the far-right party Britain First, and deputy leader Jayda Fransen, have both had their Twitter accounts suspended today.