
A calendar of upcoming changes to the Twitter Rules - coloneltcb
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2017/safetycalendar.html
======
adamrezich
Hopefully Twitter actually defines a lot of these nebulous and highly-
subjective terms going forward.

What is the exact definition of a "violent group"?

What constitutes "hateful imagery"?

Where can I find their database of "hate symbols"?

What constitutes a "hateful display name"?

What constitutes "condoning and glorifying violence"? (I would argue that many
if not most video games at least glorify violence, from my perspective!)

In our modern Internet-connected society, the meanings of terms and symbols
are subject to rapid and unexpected change. The ADL lists "Pepe the Frog" as a
"hate symbol"[0], and while it's basically undeniable that many people use the
symbol in an intentionally inflammatory or hateful context, I'm left
completely at a loss as to whether or not posting an image of Pepe—or any
cartoon frog for that matter—will get me suspended. (I have no reason to do so
of course; this is entirely hypothetical.)

From the perspective of many people, especially those who use Twitter, certain
political figures are considered to be inherently "hateful", and showing
support for them is considered to be an act of hate.

There's a lot of talk about lines being drawn here but no talk of where
exactly they will be drawn.

[0] [https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-
symbols/pepe-t...](https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-
the-frog)

~~~
bitshiffed
Glorifying violence would also cover huge amounts of video media.

I'm all for this, but I seriously doubt we'll see Twitter stand up to
movie/television studios.

~~~
zellyn
I think the big question here is our President's tweets…

~~~
cisanti
What do you mean by that? Your president's idiotic tweets make Twitter
millions, this is the only reason many people hear about Twitter...

~~~
balls187
It's why Twitter has allowed Trump's account to get away with clear rule
violations.

~~~
nailer
My understanding is that the military and police, as representatives of an
elected government, are legally allowed violence and should also be allowed to
exist on Twitter.

------
kevinmchugh
These are all just more detail on the One Rule of Social Media: You get banned
when you're more trouble than you're worth.

There's some obviously good refinements here, suspension appeals are a no-
brainer. There's been an undocumented appeals process where banned users
complain until some twitter employee cares enough to look into it, but many
users don't have enough clout to have that accomplished.

No added rules are going to protect users who write in languages which Twitter
doesn't employee readers of: [https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/your-app-isnt-
helping-the-...](https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/your-app-isnt-helping-the-
people-of-saudi-arabia-1790198445)

~~~
brianberns
> No added rules are going to protect users who write in languages which
> Twitter doesn't employee readers of

How would a user who writes in such a language get banned in the first place?

~~~
viraptor
(photo of a person being shot) "this is what just happened on the street!"

Banned: you're propagating violence, I'm assuming that from the photo

(Photo of a racist poster) "look at what company X uses to get more money"

Banned: spreading racist images

------
rsoto
One thing that bothers me about twitter is that there is a special case of
harassement that is just impossible to report: trending topics.

Here in Mexico (can't say if that happens anywhere else), every week or two
there are hate trending topics against women, other countries and indigenous
people and these last for more than a day.

If twitter wants to be a «safe and welcoming place» for anybody, they are
missing out a huge issue, as there is no way to report a trending topic nor to
find who created/popularized it in the first place (so we can report it,
altough I'm sure it wouldn't lead to anything). I can't imagine what's going
on twitter directive's heads, as the trending topic is almost one of the top 5
things a new user sees.

For what I can tell, these trending topics are created by influencers and bots
to flex their muscles before a paid campaign, often regarding the government.

~~~
jordigh
I haven't followed Mexican Twitter much, so I'm a little surprised but not too
much to hear that there are anti-women trending topics with regularity. Do you
think this is a general Mexican machismo cultural problem or something that is
more localised to the internet?

~~~
rsoto
Can't say for sure, but we mexicans are very hypocrite about racism. We look
at the US and can't believe how they treat their immigrants, but we do the
same in the south border. I have heard that we treat them even worse than what
happens in our north border.

There's a machismo culture and it might be the worst about ourselves, but also
we look down to the indigenous population, saying things like «you are so
indigenous» to mock somebody who has done something stupid.

Obviously we are not all like that, but when you look at the average mexican,
things are not looking too good. So there's that, but also the thing about the
trending topics is that it looks like it's created by people that gets paid to
create them. And between jobs they are testing their weapons, focusing on a
controversial issue (when you click on a trending topic it's almost 50%-50%
people using it to make their hateful statement to those who use it to defend
the affected group of people).

Regardless, a platform as interested in their user's safety shouldn't be a
megaphone for hate speech.

------
haydenlee
> Violent Groups. We will start suspending accounts for organizations that use
> violence to advance their cause.

Surely this is just the spirit of the rule and not the literal definition? Or
will all nation states be suspended from Twitter?

~~~
eterm
Remember when twitter was praised for being part of what helped the Arab
Spring?

Now both corrupt and moral alike can be clamped down by these rules. Who will
be the arbiter of what is considered a "violent organisation" and what is
considered fair? Are "freedom fighters" on the side of good exempt from these
suspensions or are twitter now simply too much part of the establishment to
care for the next revolutions?

I can understand that twitter absolutely need to clamp down on spread of hate-
speech and the spread of horrendous videos such as those that were produced by
ISIS/ISIL for propaganda and recruitment purposes. But vague rules leads to
selective enforcement which could be worrying for free speech and democracy in
future.

~~~
Amezarak
> videos such as those that were produced by ISIS/ISIL

ISIS videos are what people are using to sell these policies. In reality, a
lot of mainstream political speech in the US and EU will be censored by these
policies. This is not an accident. Social media has succeeded too well in
allowing normal plebians to spread ideas the ruling classes find distasteful.

~~~
pjc50
> a lot of mainstream political speech in the US and EU will be censored by
> these policies

Such as?

~~~
nnfy
How many times have you seen Donald Trump called a Nazi? You dont think it a
stretch to have twitter ban people for supporting certain policies? Twitter
does seem to lean quite heavily left, does it not?

What about the rise of the right in the EU? What about "undesired" stories
about actual problems, large and small scale, caused by migrants? Pretty
important topic, I would think, yet we already have communities self censoring
all over the internet, what is stopping twitter from applying these laughably
nebulous rules to hide a side of discussion on this topic too?

~~~
te_chris
Well, when the president praises Nazi's as 'very fine people', what do you
expect? Also, when the European far-right whips up fear and bullshit beyond
all proportion against groups of the EU's own citizens, what do you expect?

~~~
zo1
See, that's the sort of thing he's talking about precisely. You've already
made your mind up about Trump's comment, and detracted the conversation
entirely. Next thing you know, you and other Twitter users all make a big hoo-
ha about a relatively benign comment because you think it's offensive, and
decide to report it to Twitter for it to get banned. There is nothing hateful
about his statements, and you really should re-evaluate your critical
reasoning (or news sources, if you took them for their word on it rather than
evaluating it yourself) if you think it does.

Here, just look at it in its entirety:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs)

Case in point: "And I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and white
supremacists, because they should be condemned totally"

Moving back. _Political speech_ , commentary, opinions and debate need to be
uncensored _entirely_ , no exceptions, if you are to have a democratic
society. Otherwise, you're just thought-policing people into thinking/acting
into the norm. Sure, harassing someone over a political view won't fall under
that, but the key qualifier there is "harassing". I'd go so-far as to say that
any platform that is open to the public needs to be punished for silencing any
sort of political speech. That is undemocratic, for lack of a better word.
Because it shuts-down general debate.

------
pavel_lishin
What's the difference between "Better experience for Suspension Appeals" and
"Educating abusers about our rules", and why does it have different dates?
Both seem to address the problem of accounts being suspended, and not being
told why.

And will @USArmy be banned on November 3rd for being a "organization that uses
violence to advance their cause"?

------
dogruck
I think a big step forward would be a "right to be forgotten." Currently, the
Twitter hoard is free to dox, "parody" and generally permanently harass any
private citizen.

Anyone who has attempted to use Twitter's reporting mechanism knows it's a
vapid black hole to /dev/null.

I've been told, "oh, people who hire a lawyer can usually get traction" \--
and that's ridiculous.

~~~
rtpg
For the reporting mechanism: it isn't!

I've reported many people's tweets. Mainly people posting far-right memes and
also yelling at people for being Jews. Their accounts go away after a couple
of days.

This might not be as effective for less blatant rule breaking

~~~
wbl
I got reported for calling Marin residents who didn't want to pay a $75 tax to
support affordable housing because it might mean poor people in Marin "greedy
cunts" and my account was suspended. Meanwhile they get to launch all sorts of
insults and personal attacks at proponents of more housing and not get banned.

~~~
rtpg
To be honest temporary bans for that kind of language would only help Twitter.

You can express the same amount of outrage with cleaner language.

~~~
dogruck
Filtering tweets based on bad language sounds like an easy user-based-
configuration.

Do you think that Google's search results should contain pages with foul
language or hardcore pornography? Or are you OK with Google's "safe search"
functionality, which defaults to "safe"?

------
jawns
One of the things I think all social websites should take away from these
rules is:

Processes that requires making value judgements do not easily scale.

There is so much in just this small list of changes that really cannot be
automated or done without some kind of human interaction.

~~~
s73ver_
One of the reasons why these problems got so big is that these companies tried
to automate too much of it. Had they started with people moderating from the
start, the kinds of problems they had likely wouldn't have taken hold in the
first place.

~~~
BurningFrog
But with people moderating, you can never have billions of users.

------
ThrustVectoring
I'd be shocked if these rules get used on the "let's punch Nazis" camp. More
likely is that there's now additional things to point to when "problematic"
tweets get mass-flagged.

~~~
KGIII
Recently, someone posted a complaint about a Halloween costume that was a
wall. That got the perpetually outraged group in motion, of course. One user
said she would punch anyone who she saw wearing such a costume. Twitter banned
her.

So, things may be changing slowly. It isn't easy for some folks to see faults
in people who agree with them. I notice that when I stand up for something on
the political right, I'm often assumed to be a member of the right. If I point
out a problem with the political left, I'm often assumed to be a member of the
political right.

It's very binary and people really aren't always objective. But, there are
instances where this is changing. Some BLM members were recently banned
because of hate speech and suggesting violence and some AntiFa have also
suffered the same fate.

It takes time but it does appear that they are being more honest with their
enforcement.

Of course, you still have the group who will try to interpret things as other
than written. There are people who see -isms where none exist.

On this topic, it has led me to trying to coin the phrase, 'If you seek
umbrage, you will find it.' I've seen another person quote it, so it may be
catching on slowly.

~~~
kelukelugames
Rose Mcgowan was temporarily suspended too.

~~~
notatoad
she posted somebody's phone number. If there's one surefire way to get
punished on twitter, that's it.

------
ProAm
Not being political but I honestly feel Donald Trump saved Twitter from
oblivion. They were in dire straits last year and seem to have coasted
through. I still sort of wish they would fail and vanish, but I think it's
significant they are still here today when they couldn't find a buyer to save
their lives not long ago.

~~~
MBCook
It certainly gets their name out there a lot more.

The truth is journalists really seem to love Twitter so I don’t think it was
going to go anywhere anytime soon anyway.

------
jhugg
All of these rules seem to make sense. They probably made sense 5 years ago?

But seriously, why the grace period? If I condone violence to promote a cause
in October, is that ok? Just not next month? Is revenge porn ok for another 6
days?

~~~
zellyn
Any time you suspend people, you need an escalation path, and you need real
support people behind that. So you can't just turn on all the things until you
staff up.

~~~
icebraining
They could staff up before announcing the changes, though.

------
PatientTrades
Without President Trump twitter would be useless in all honestly. It was
slowly dying similar to tumblr, myspace, etc. But Trump revitalized it and
made it a staple of politics. Great way to bypass the media and talk directly
to the people

~~~
DavidSJ
And with him it's worse than useless.

------
gnicholas
Kind of weird to share these guidelines as an image of text. It's not
accessible this way, and I can't think of any reason why they would have
chosen to share it as an image instead of a table with text. What am I
missing?

~~~
ClassyJacket
I would assume so it can be tweeted. That's Twitter for you. Under 140 at all
costs, even if it screws the vision impaired.

~~~
gnicholas
Well yeah they could tweet an image of text if they want (and use alt-text if
they cared), but why would they handicap the website by using the same image?

------
followmeon
One man's hate symbol is another man's freedom of expression.

[https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-
symbols/pepe-t...](https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-
the-frog)

If Twitter really bans Pepe the Frog I expect a huge backlash. Whatever
mechanism exists to get some symbol recognized as a hate symbol will be
exploited by trolls: The Twitter bird itself could be saying some very nasty
stuff soon.

Unwanted sexual advances is also a slippery slope. Twitter is already
banning/muting users that make sexual advances to a company mascotte: Tony the
Tiger. So I can't imagine how this will look like in "real life".

About the hateful names, what exactly would this be targeting? Are
"jewgoldstein" or "(((they)))know" hateful ban-able names?

I don't have a verified logo next to my name, nor can I write 280 character
Tweets, so I don't have much to lose if these new rules turn out to be
draconic. All the hate groups (think lowest of low: harassing family of
suicide victims), all the violence, all the glorification of terrorist
attacks: It is mostly water under the bridge by now, and posturing. The large
number of bots and users guarantees that this will be some ML algorithm with a
few false positives, that won't have much of a voice for you to care about it.

------
kelukelugames
I've seen a lot of anti-semitic and Right Wind Death Squad (RWDS) memes on
Twitter. How can the company be anti harassment when that is allowed?

------
perlgeek
No words on actions against bots. I guess technically they are already
forbidden, so not applicable in a "rules" post, but still a bit disappointing.

~~~
MBCook
I agree. The few times I’ve ever tried to look at my “local“ Twitter have been
a mess. Bot posting weather for where I live (and a whole bunch of other
places?). Flood of postings of every job entered to any online database near
me. A whole bunch of other automated garbage.

If I want to see what people near me are tweeting it’s basically impossible.
The signal to noise ratio is insane.

------
eqmvii
Hopefully those nitpicking the wording, timing, and implementation of these
rules realize just how deep harassment and hate run on social media platforms
like Twitter.

Certainly the rules are imperfect, but the amount of anonymous toxicity
currently allowed is IMO much worse than some clunky standards. There's a lot
of space between defending free speech and standing idly by while people use
your service to attack others.

~~~
adamrezich
I have to ask though... what is the actual problem with all of this
"harassment"? Yes, many people pseudonymously post a lot of hateful garbage on
Twitter, but it's just words on the Internet—if you put yourself out there as
a public figure, assholes are gonna be assholes.

A few months ago, a VICE editor wrote a piece originally titled "Let's Blow Up
Mount Rushmore" (the title was later changed)[0]. Being a South Dakotan, this
was pretty offensive to me, and my reply got the most likes and retweets,
putting it in the prominent "first reply" spot[1]. I got a lot of very nasty
comments from various extremely angry people, including one who implied I was
a Nazi or something by saying "I wonder if "rezich" [my surname] is supposed
to be similar to "Reich" or it's just some amazing irony"[2]

I just shrugged it all off as the vitriolic Internet being the vitriolic
Internet. I engaged with a few of the replies, but I let many of them just be,
because really, what is the use in getting worked up over rude and angry
Internet comments, that take nearly zero effort to post?

I understand that Twitter improving its harassment reduction systems will lead
to better experiences for its users and overall make it a more attractive
platform for people in general, but there's this idea that it is the "moral
duty" of Twitter to prevent assholes on the Internet from being assholes on
the Internet, and I just can't for the life of me understand it.

Words only have as much power as you let them have, and for some reason (which
I won't speculate on here), it seems like everyone these days seem to want to
give "hate speech" as much power as possible.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/VICE/status/898266524183662593](https://twitter.com/VICE/status/898266524183662593)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/rezich/status/898268626511306752](https://twitter.com/rezich/status/898268626511306752)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/DejaVerdin/status/898817028663816192](https://twitter.com/DejaVerdin/status/898817028663816192)

~~~
burkaman
If you hosted a party and someone got super drunk and started shouting racial
slurs at everyone, would you tell them to leave? Or would you laugh it off and
tell everyone else to chill because it's just words?

> I understand that Twitter improving its harassment reduction systems will
> lead to better experiences for its users and overall make it a more
> attractive platform for people in general

You seem to have answered your own question here.

~~~
remarkEon
That’s not the same thing. It’s much easier to just disengage on the Internet
than in person. Presumably if this person is at your house you’d know them,
which would add an element of emotional drama that isn’t there when some
random person on frog twitter is posting Pepe memes. Just, like, look away.

~~~
burkaman
In this analogy, Twitter is the host, users are guests. If a racist asshole
shows up at the party, everyone else can easily disengage, by just leaving.
Should the host just leave the door open and sit in the back making sure the
lights stay on, prioritizing absolute free speech over who is having a good
time? Or should they kick out toxic guests, so the people they like will stay?

~~~
pls2halp
But if someone shows up wearing a black coat and jackboots because they think
they look cool(or posting pepe memes because they think the images are funny),
can you brand them as racist and kick them out?

~~~
burkaman
You sure can, especially if they're making the party uncomfortable and
unpleasant for the rest of your guests. Their crime is not so much dressing
like a Nazi, but intentionally antagonizing other people for no reason. If it
wasn't intentional, they should note the reactions, take other people into
consideration, and either leave or correct their behavior. Why don't other
people have to consider the Nazi-dresser's feelings? Well, they do. They'll
consider them for 10 seconds, realize there is no legitimate reason to be
dressed like that, and rightfully suspect bad intentions.

If you want to be accepted into a community, earn it. Other people have no
obligation to tolerate your presence and listen to your speech. Freedom of
speech does not mean freedom to be heard.

~~~
remarkEon
This is such a dangerous path to go down, and it's really easy to see where we
end up.

Let's say I'm vehemently anti-abortion, and have a YouTube channel where I
discuss that topic. If some sufficient amount of users find my content
"intentionally antagonizing" I could be de-platformed. YouTube is perfectly
within their legal rights to do this, of course, at least currently. But these
tech companies have all become critical infrastructure in how we communicate.
Do you honestly think it's a good idea for these tech companies to start
enforcing ideological conformity? What's perfectly normal speech for one is
intentionally antagonizing to another.

~~~
burkaman
No, I don't think tech companies should enforce ideological conformity, but
they shouldn't enforce ideological equality either. A lot of people,
especially on HN, seem to have this idea that if a rule or policy can't be
exactly defined, it shouldn't be used. It's not possible to codify "no
assholes allowed", so we should just abandon that idea.

Look, the reason we don't have a law against Nazi ideas in America is that
it's too dangerous to give the government that power. If we did have such a
law, and it were abused, there's no higher power to appeal to. We have nearly
absolute free speech not because all speech deserves equal consideration, but
simply because there is no practical legal alternative. But it is crucial to
understand that since we can't give the government that power, society is
obligated to pick up the slack. Nazis cannot be punished legally, so they must
be punished socially. We all wish we lived in a world where any idea could be
freely discussed, and "bad" ones would be naturally dismissed, but we don't.
The world doesn't naturally improve, people force it to, and not just by
hosting neutral discussion spaces.

What I'm describing is basically majority rule, and I understand how dangerous
it is. Frankly, over the course of history, it's usually gone poorly. But
_there is no alternative_. If you decide to be neutral, you're just giving
more power to those who aren't. If you don't like racism, so you decide to
live your life "colorblind", you're helping racists, as they obviously won't
join you. As a member of society, you have an obligation to not only avoid
helping racists, but actively work against them by loudly arguing with them,
depriving them of opportunities to promote or implement their ideas, and maybe
kicking them out of a party if they try to start some shit.

Twitter can't be neutral, because everybody else isn't. In fact it's not
really possible to be neutral, they can either endorse the status quo, or work
against it. If they abuse their incredibly powerful position, there is a
higher power we can appeal to who is required to be neutral in such cases.

~~~
remarkEon
No one is saying they should "enforce ideological equality". What I am saying
is that it's dangerous for a tech company to tip the scales like this.

Under your majoritarian rule proposal we'd just end up with any idea
sufficiently derided by the loudest groups and most influential twitter
personalities effectively banned. Especially given that 140-characters isn't
enough space to realistically make full throated arguments, the prospect of
people being misinterpreted is resoundingly high.

>We all wish we lived in a world where any idea could be freely discussed, and
"bad" ones would be naturally dismissed, but we don't. The world doesn't
naturally improve, people force it to, and not just by hosting neutral
discussion spaces.

This statement is just Neomarxism repackaged. Taken to its logical conclusion,
these corporations _should_ become essentially political entities that enforce
whatever ideological consensus the majority deems palatable. Twitter thus
becomes a tool for sociocultural engineering. Given how poorly the company
operates today, they should probably stay away from trying to broaden their
mandate.

>If you decide to be neutral, you're just giving more power to those who
aren't...

What? No I'm not. _No one is neutral_ and those who say they are are lying. It
sounds like you're half trying to Kafkatrap me. Just because I don't endorse
Twitter's rule-making in this context does not mean I'm "helping racists".
Especially since the definition of who is a Nazi or a racist seems to be
continually expanding, forgive me for being skeptical that if they abuse their
power anything would be done. You'd be helping the Nazis, remember?

~~~
burkaman
Sorry, I'm just using "you" because I need a subject for my examples. It's the
colloquial "you", I'm not literally talking about you. I'll stop.

Anyway, I agree that no one is neutral, that's my point. Twitter already is a
political entity, it already is a tool for sociocultural engineering. It can't
not be. The policy of "any and all legal speech will be allowed" is a
political choice and an endorsement of the status quo. Allowing Nazi speech is
obviously not as bad as literally being a Nazi, but it is an acceptance of the
way things are. Allowing speech is just as political as blocking speech.

There is no way to avoid making these decisions, and the more power one has,
the more the choice matters. A free-for-all policy is equivalent to an
individual staying silent when their friend makes a racist joke, but with much
greater consequences. If the people in charge of Twitter didn't want this
responsibility, they shouldn't have created the site.

------
coliveira
This article makes a clear case why we should NOT be using Twitter. This means
that in a supposedly open society and with a supposedly open technology there
will be a company patrolling what each of us say, to see if it corresponds to
what THEY believe to be appropriate? You can please count me out.

------
sjreese
Level Set: Amendment 1

Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or
of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble aAmendment 1

Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of
the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress
of grievances. And to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

~~~
Marazan
Cool, how does that apply to Twitter?

------
crystaln
It will be interesting to see how Twitter allows Donald Trump to be abusive
and threatening, while not allowing other celebrities, based on some carefully
carved out definition of "newsworthy."

------
thinkingemote
I think that this really does teach something valuable about social media and
what humans actually are. I think we are seeing the death of Social Media
here, at least in its current shape. One hopes that some technologist will
learn some lessons from this and build something better.

Of course, I'm just a youngster and some of you oldies would just be seeing
history repeated, I guess, but what I have in mind is the truly global nature
of societies and peoples.

------
jacobr
Organisations that use violence to advance their cause would include any army
and armed forces, sometimes even posting images of things like drone strikes.

I doubt they would be banned though, it would make it very difficult to keep
up to date with international conflicts such as the ones in Syria and Yemen.

