Twitter is done with hate symbols and violent groups

Twitter, a platform infested with trolls, hate and abuse, can be one of the worst places on the internet. As a followup to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s tweetstorm last week, in which he promised to crack down on hate and abuse by implementing more aggressive rules, Twitter is gearing up to roll out some updates in the coming weeks, Wired reported earlier today.

“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,” Twitter said in a statement to TechCrunch.

In an email to members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, Twitter’s head of safety policy outlined some of the company’s new approaches to abuse. Twitter’s policies have not specifically addressed hate symbols and imagery, violent groups and tweets that glorify violence, but that will soon change.

Twitter has not yet defined what the policy around hate symbols will cover but “At a high level, hateful imagery, hate symbols, etc will now be considered sensitive media” — similar to the way Twitter handles adult content and graphic violence, the email stated.

With violent groups (think alt-right groups), Twitter “will take enforcement action against organizations that use/have historically used violence as a means to advance their cause.” Twitter has yet to outline the parameters it will use to identify such groups.

While Twitter already takes action against people who threaten violence, the company is going to take it a step further and take action against tweets that glorify violence, like “Murdering makes sense. That way they won’t be a drain on social services,” according to the email.

Meanwhile, updates to existing policies will address non-consensual nudity (“creep shots”) and unwanted sexual advances.

On non-consensual nudity:

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.

On unwanted sexual advances:

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.

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

Here’s the full email:

Dear Trust & Safety Council members,

I’d like to follow up on Jack’s Friday night Tweetstorm about upcoming policy and enforcement changes.  Some of these have already been discussed with you via previous conversations about the Twitter Rules update. Others are the result of internal conversations that we had throughout last week.

Here’s some more information about the policies Jack mentioned as well as a few other updates that we’ll be rolling out in the weeks ahead.

Non-consensual nudity

• Current approach
  • We treat people who are the original, malicious posters of non-consensual nudity the same as we do people who may unknowingly Tweet the content. In both instances, people are required to delete the Tweet(s) in question and are temporarily locked out of their accounts. They are permanently suspended if they post non-consensual nudity again.
• Updated approach
  • 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.
  • Our definition of “non-consensual nudity” is expanding to more broadly include content like upskirt imagery, “creep shots,” and hidden camera content. 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. While we recognize there’s an entire genre of pornography dedicated to this type of content, it’s nearly impossible for us to distinguish when this content may/may not have been produced and distributed consensually. We would rather error on the side of protecting victims and removing this type of content when we become aware of it.

Unwanted sexual advances

• Current approach
  • Pornographic content is generally permitted on Twitter, and it’s challenging to know whether or not sexually charged conversations and/or the exchange of sexual media may be wanted. To help infer whether or not a conversation is consensual, we currently rely on and take enforcement action only if/when we receive a report from a participant in the conversation.
• Updated approach
  • 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.

Hate symbols and imagery (new)

• We are still defining the exact scope of what will be covered by this policy. At a high level, hateful imagery, hate symbols, etc will now be considered sensitive media(similar to how we handle and enforce adult content and graphic violence).
• More details to come.

Violent groups (new)

• We are still defining the exact scope of what will be covered by this policy. At a high level, we will take enforcement action against organizations that use/have historically used violence as a means to advance their cause.
• More details to come here as well (including insight into the factors we will consider to identify such groups).

Tweets that glorify violence (new)

• We already take enforcement action against direct violent threats (“I’m going to kill you”), vague violent threats (“Someone should kill you”) and wishes/hopes of serious physical harm, death, or disease (“I hope someone kills you”). Moving forward, we will also take action against content that glorifies (“Praise be to <terrorist name> for shooting up <event>. He’s a hero!”) and/or condones (“Murdering <x group of people> makes sense. That way they won’t be a drain on social services”).
• More details to come.

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.

In addition to launching new policies, updating enforcement processes and improving our appeals process, we have to do a better job explaining our policies and setting expectations for acceptable behavior on our service. In the coming weeks, we will be:

• updating the Twitter Rules as we previously discussed (+ adding in these new policies)
• updating the Twitter media policy to explain what we consider to be adult content, graphic violence, and hate symbols.
• launching a standalone Help Center page to explain the factors we consider when making enforcement decisions and describe our range of enforcement options
• launching new policy-specific Help Center pages to describe each policy in greater detail, provide examples of what crosses the line, and set expectations for enforcement consequences
• Updating outbound language to people who violate our policies (what we say when accounts are locked, suspended, appealed, etc).

We have a lot of work ahead of us and will definitely be turning to you all for guidance in the weeks ahead. We will do our best to keep you looped in on our progress.

All the best,
Head of Safety Policy