Technology and Internet

Twitter updates its policy on speech inciting violence

Twitter has not stopped making changes since the reins passed into the hands of businessman Elon Musk. With that said, not all changes are of equal magnitude, but they’re still worth mentioning. In this sense, recently the social platform updated its policy on speech inciting violence or “hate speech”, as it is colloquially known among platform users.

What Constitutes a Violent Speech Violation on Twitter?

As always, Twitter maintains a zero-tolerance policy against incitement to violence and reiterates that inciting, glorifying, or expressing a desire for harm is not allowed; the daily bread, so really not much has changed. However, they have modified one or the other aspect of the policy paragraphs and reorganized the content.

A significant addition to the policy of incitement to violence is the one that indicates that it is the use of coded language is prohibited (also known as a “dog whistle”) to directly incite violence.

With this update, Twitter is preparing to comply with the new rules of the European Union that will come into force in the fall.

With this update, Twitter is preparing to comply with the new rules of the European Union that will come into force in the fall.

The same way, the new policy explains what are the exceptions to the rule; among which are expressions of incitement to violence when there is no clear context of abuse or violence, as well as in the case of consensual speech between friends and in discussions of video games and sporting events.

According to Twitter, the platform makes sure to assess and understand the context behind each conversation before taking action.

If you are wondering what those specific measures are, well, the classic suspensions. In this sense, Twitter indicates that they reserve the right to immediately and permanently suspend accounts that fail to comply with this policy. For their part, in the case of minor insults, they may apply a temporary suspension; naturally, in case of incurring new offenses the suspension will be permanent.

Finally, the policy vaguely mentions “less punitive measures” than may be taken in cases of incitement to violence generated in reaction to credible allegations of serious violence.

If you want to take a look at the complete policy visit this link.

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