As part of its effort to combat abuse and harassment, Twitter updated the Twitter Rules with more specific language that emphasizes that it won’t tolerate anymore abusive behaviour of users. The update adds a new section dedicated to ‘hateful conduct’, which tells users that they are not allowed to threaten or promote violence against other people based on their race, gender, ethnicity and other characteristics. Twitter also doesn’t allow any accounts that are created with a purpose to incite harm to others.
Twitter believes that protection from harassment is a vital part of empowering people for their freedom of expression in the website. It also stated that the company encourages diverse beliefs and opinions, but won’t tolerate any users that cross the line into abuse. Apart from that, there isn’t much that is different from Twitter’s previous set of rules, which were announced in April alongside the launch of new tools for blocking, muting and reporting abusive behaviour.
Besides the ‘hateful conduct’ part, the ‘Abusive Behaviour’ section in Twitter Rules are also updated with more lists of activities such as posting others’ personal information and multiple account abuse. Of course, users will have their accounts temporarily locked or subjected to permanent suspension should they ever engage in those activities.
In relation to this current issue on Twitter, Engadget stated that: “It’s a particularly hot lightning rod for abuse since its main appeal is free-roaming, public conversations. Twitter will need more than mere language changes to deal with that.”
(Source: Twitter (1), (2) via Engadget)
