Twitter Bans Dehumanizing Posts Towards Religious Groups

Tweets that go against the new policy will be taken down, the micro-blogging platform said in a statement on Tuesday.

Image: AFP

San Francisco: Twitter has expanded its rules against hateful conduct to include language on its platform that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion. Tweets that go against the new policy will be taken down, the micro-blogging platform said in a statement on Tuesday. "If reported, tweets that break this rule sent before today will need to be deleted, but will not directly result in any account suspensions because they were tweeted before the rule was set," said the company.

Today we’re announcing an expansion to this policy which will address dehumanizing language towards religious groups. This is just the first step. Over time we'll expand the policy to include more groups and update you along the way. Learn more: https://t.co/yAZruwobJT

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 9, 2019

Last year, Twitter asked for feedback from different communities and cultures to ban hateful content based on religion.

Last year we asked for your thoughts on how we could expand our hateful conduct policy to include dehumanizing language. We heard that we needed to be clearer, narrow down our focus, and explain how we enforce.

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 9, 2019

In two weeks, it received more than 8,000 responses from people located in more than 30 countries. "Across languages, people believed the proposed change could be improved by providing more details, examples of violations, and explanations for when and how context is considered," said Twitter. Many people also raised concerns about Twitter's ability to enforce its rules fairly and consistently. "Our primary focus is on addressing the risks of offline harm, and research shows that dehumanizing language increases that risk," said Twitter. The respondents also asked the company to use clearer language when defining policy violations and to be more consistent in its enforcement of the rules.