SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter said on Wednesday that it has updated its Help Centre to more clearly articulate and take firm action against hateful or abusive content on the social media site.
In a bid to promote healthy conversation on the platform, the micro-blogging site said that hateful conduct and abusive behaviour policies prohibit abuse and harassment of protected categories, and cover a wide range of behaviours.
A tweet shared on its official account said, “In line with our commitment to the healthy public conversation, we are continuously evolving our policies by gathering feedback from a variety of partners to ensure Twitter is a place where everyone can feel safe.”
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1399863970371039232
It does not permit the denial of violent events, including abusive references to specific events where protected categories were the primary victims, it added.
According to the social networking site, reaffirmed this policy now covers targeted and non-targeted content. “Our hateful conduct and abusive behaviour policies prohibit abuse and harassment of protected categories and cover a wide range of behaviours.” read the statement.
“We’ve updated the Twitter Help Center to more clearly articulate when we will take enforcement action moving forward, it added.
Earlier, Twitter said that it would crack down on false posts about COVID-19 vaccines beginning next week, following in the footsteps of Facebook and YouTube.
The social media platform already targets posts containing false information on how the virus spreads and the efficacy of public health measures such as mask-wearing.
“We will prioritize the removal of the most harmful misleading information, and… begin to label tweets that contain potentially misleading information about the vaccines,” Twitter said in a statement.
“We are focused on mitigating misleading information that presents the biggest potential harm to people’s health and wellbeing.” The policy will include action against claims that the vaccine is used to intentionally cause harm or control people.
Vaccination campaigns have started in several countries, including Britain, the United States and Canada, and are about to start in the European Union after approval from the regulator for the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech.
YouTube and Facebook have previously announced strict policies to censor vaccine misinformation and efforts to disrupt vaccination campaigns.
