Twitter out to crack down on abusive tweets
Twitter out to crack down on abusive tweets
AFP By Glenn Chapman 8 hours ago
San Francisco (AFP) - Twitter said Thursday that it is
cracking down on mean, hateful or menacing tweets that cross the red line from
free speech into abuse.
Twitter is overhauling its safety policy and beefing up
the team responsible for enforcing it, along with investing "heavily"
in ways to detect and limit the reach of abusive content, general counsel
Vijaya Gadde said in an column published by the Washington Post.
"We need to do a better job combating abuse without
chilling or silencing speech," Gadde said.
Twitter last month modified its rules to ban 'revenge
porn' -- the tweeting of intimate or revealing pictures or video of people
without their permission.
The San Francisco-based micro-blogging site is also
taking steps to curtail the use of anonymously created Twitter accounts to
intimidate or silence targeted people.
"We are changing our approach to this problem, in
some ways that won't be readily apparent and in others that will be,"
Gadde said.
Twitter has tripled the size of the team responsible for
protecting users of the service, resulting in a five-fold increase in the speed
of response to complaints, according to the general counsel.
"We are also overhauling our safety policies to give
our teams a better framework from which to protect vulnerable users,"
Gadde said.
Changes included expanding the definition of banned
"abuse" to include indirect threats of violence.
"As some of our users have unfortunately experienced
firsthand, certain types of abuse on our platform have gone unchecked because
our policies and product have not appropriately recognized the scope and extent
of harm inflicted by abusive behavior," Gadde said.
"Even when we have recognized that harassment is
taking place, our response times have been inexcusably slow and the substance
of our responses too meager. This is, to put it mildly, not good enough."
- Instagram targets terror -
Facebook last month updated its "community
standards" guidelines, giving users more clarity on acceptable posts
relating to nudity, violence, hate speech and other contentious topics.
Facebook-owned smartphone photo and video sharing service
Instagram followed suit on Thursday with a similar overhaul of its rules about
what is deemed unacceptable.
"It was time for a refresh; to streamline it and
provide a better explanation," Instagram director of public policy Nicky
Jackson Colaco told AFP, citing the services global growth since being acquired
by Facebook three years ago in a deal valued at a billion dollars.
"We are setting expectations for what kinds of
content we think are acceptable to share on Instagram and what could happen if
you violated the policy."
Instagram boasts more than 300 million active users
worldwide, while Facebook lays claim to about 1.38 billion active monthly
users.
Instagram guidelines ban nudity, along with threats, and
hate speech.
The new community guidelines state that "sharing
graphic images for sadistic pleasure or to glorify violence is never
allowed."
Facebook's updated community doctrine states that the
world's biggest social network will not allow a presence from groups advocating
"terrorist activity, organized criminal activity or promoting hate."
The moves come with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and
other social media struggling with defining acceptable content and freedom of
expression, and with these services increasingly linked to radical extremism
and violence.
"What we come back to is what we want our platform
to be used for and what we don't want it to be used for," Jackson Colaco
said, noting that Instagram was created in a 'post 9/11 world.'
"Instagram is not a place to support or praise
terrorism, organized crime, or hate groups," the new community guidelines
stated.
"We remove content that contains credible threats or
hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them,
personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated
unwanted messages."
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