Twitter rules set to tackle online violence and hate more aggresively

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) has promised to crack down on hate, violence and sexual harassment posts with “more aggressive rules.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made the announcement in a series of tweets over the weekend and following the #WomenBoycottTwitter protest against online harassment.

In addition, Dorsey said the changes in the rules “will start rolling out in the next few weeks.”

Harsher rules

Dorsey’s message is as follows: “We see voices being silenced on Twitter every day. We’ve been working to counteract this for the past two years. We prioritized this in 2016. We updated our policies and increased the size of our teams. It wasn’t enough.”

“In 2017 we made it our top priority and made a lot of progress. Today we saw voices silencing themselves and voices speaking out because we’re *still* not doing enough,” he added.

The Twitter CEI also said, “We’ve been working intensely over the past few months and focused today on making some critical decisions. We decided to take a more aggressive stance on our rules and how we enforce them. New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence. These changes will start rolling out in the next few weeks. More to share next week.”

Critical decisions

According to a TechCrunch report, Dorsey said: “Critical decisions were made on how to go about preventing the rampant and vicious harassment many women, minorities and other users undergo daily on the platform.”

Nevertheless, Twitter user @gigamesh replied to Dorsey’s announcement by calling out the micro-blogging site for not following its terms of service. The user also called for a ban of U.S. President Donald Trump from Twitter.

“Follow your terms of service and ban @realDonaldTrump,” @gigamesh said.

Boycott

The #WomenBoycottTwitter came after a temporary suspension of actress Rose McGowan’s Twitter account last week.

McGowan rose to fame via the now-defunct supernatural TV series “Charmed.” Twitter suspended McGowan’s account after she had been tweeting about sexual violence against women.

She specifically tweeted about sexual harassment allegations raised against embattled Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Some actresses including Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment.

Rebuttal

Meanwhile, Dorsey’s announcement about aggressive rules against hate, violence, and harassment was criticized by female users.

@yaelwrites said: “Don’t forget Rose McGowan’s voice which you silenced by suspending her account.”

Dorsey, however, explained that they suspended McGowan’s account until she deleted a tweet that “contained someone’s private information.”

@jilliancyork, for her part, said the suspension of the actress’ account was a drastic move.

Other users also claimed that the 280-character privilege was taken away from them after joining the #WomenBoycottTwitter account.

After restoring McGowan’s account, Twitter said: “Twitter is proud to empower and support the voices on our platform, especially those that speak truth to power.”

“We stand with the brave women and men who use Twitter to share their stories, and will work hard every day to improve our processes to protect those voices.”

(Featured image via Deposit Photos)

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