Tag: speech
Twitter updates violent speech policy to ban ‘wishes of harm’
Twitter is once again tightening its rules around what users are permitted to say on the platform. The company introduced an updated “violent speech” policy, which contains some notable additions compared with previous versions of the rules.
Interestingly, the new policy prohibits users from expressing “wishes of harm” and similar sentiments. “This includes (but is not limited to) hoping for others to die, suffer illnesses, tragic incidents, or experience other physically harmful consequences,” the rules state. That’s a reversal from Twitter’s previous policy, which explicitly said that “statements that express a wish or hope that someone experiences physical harm” were not against the company’s rules.
“Statements that express a wish or hope that someone experiences physical harm, making vague or indirect threats, or threatening actions that are unlikely to cause serious or lasting injury are not actionable under this policy,” Twitter’s previous policy stated, according to the Wayback Machine.
That change isn’t the only addition to the policy. Twitter’s rules now also explicitly protects “infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities” from threats of damage. From the rules:
You may not threaten to inflict physical harm on others, which includes (but is not limited to) threatening to kill, torture, sexually assault, or otherwise hurt someone. This also includes threatening to damage civilian homes and shelters, or infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities.
These may not seem like particularly eyebrow-raising changes, but they are notable given Elon Musk’s previous statements about how speech should be handled on Twitter. Prior to taking over the company, the Tesla CEO stated that his preference would be to allow all speech that is legal. “I think we would want to err on the side of, if in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said at the time.
It’s also not the first time Twitter’s rules have become more restrictive since Musk’s takeover. The company’s rules around doxxing changed following his dustup with the (now suspended) @elonjet account, which shared the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet.
Twitter didn’t explain its rationale for the changes, but noted in a series of tweets that it may suspend accounts breaking the rules or force them to delete the tweets in question. The company no longer has a communications team to respond to requests for comment.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-updates-violent-speech-policy-to-ban-wishes-of-harm-214320985.html?src=rss
Stanford Faculty Say Anonymous Student Bias Reports Threaten Free Speech
Launched in 2021, students are encouraged to report incidents in which they felt harmed, which triggers a voluntary inquiry of both the student who filed the report and the alleged perpetrator. Seventy-seven faculty members have signed a petition calling on the school to investigate in hopes they toss the system out. This comes as a larger movement by Speech First, a group who claim colleges are rampant with censorship, has filed suit against several universities for their bias reporting systems.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Joe Lycett wins comedy award and thanks Liz Truss and Hugo Boss in acceptance speech
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subpoenas Apple for Info on Alleged Free Speech Suppression
Subpoenas for documents and communications were sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Curiously, the panel left out Twitter CEO Elon Musk despite the fact that Twitter is one of the most popular social networks.
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Republicans plan to investigate whether the federal government “colluded” with tech companies to “suppress free speech” on issues like COVID-19. Republican lawmakers have long suggested that social networks and tech companies engage in anti-conservative bias by suppressing conservative voices.
In an announcement of the subpoenas, Jordan said that the House Judiciary Committee has “attempted to engage” with Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet since last year, but has been unsuccessful.
🚨HUGE BREAKING NEWS: @Jim_Jordan subpoenas Big Tech CEOs. pic.twitter.com/WuOWccu2ZC
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) February 15, 2023
Apple and the other companies will need to provide documents and communications with the U.S. government on topics that include moderation, deletion, and reduced circulation of content by March 23.
This article, “U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subpoenas Apple for Info on Alleged Free Speech Suppression” first appeared on MacRumors.com
Discuss this article in our forums
Becky Hill fears she ‘f***ed up’ her Best Dance Act BRIT Award acceptance speech
Twitter’s growing hate speech problem could yield lots of money for Elon Musk
A fleeing tide of advertising giants has been a dismal indicator of Elon Musk’s new vision of Twitter, one defined by employee mismanagement, abysmal site choices, and a clambering to replace lost revenue in any way possible. But, according to new research by The Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk might already be making up that billion-dollar gap — just from reinstating the site’s most problematic tweeters.
The report, released Feb. 9, used the site’s new publicly viewable tweet impressions metric to calculate approximate revenue earned by just 10 accounts that had previously been banned from the site for violating user guidelines. The figures estimate that the accounts, which include the likes of embattled far-right influencer Andrew Tate, COVID vaccine denier Robert Malone, and disinformation site Gateway Pundit, could rake in more than $19 million in ad revenue a year.
“The data shows that, on an average day, tweets from the ten accounts received a combined total of 54 million impressions. Projecting this average across 365 days, the accounts can be expected to reach nearly 20 billion impressions over the course of a year,” the report stated. “Assuming this rate is broadly representative of how often Twitter serves ads, the ten accounts can be estimated to generate 2.9 billion ad impressions throughout the course of a year.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate is a nonprofit advocacy and education organization working to limit harmful online content. The organization focuses specifically on how institutional structures, including the “online architecture” of sites and economic incentives, enable bad actors.
“The estimates demonstrate that Twitter will make millions of dollars from a deliberate decision to reinstate accounts that are known to spread hate and dangerous misinformation, and have already had enforcement action taken against them,” the organization wrote.
Musk has made a point to demonstrate his support of “free speech” by reinstating previously banned users across political delineations. In November, the site reinstated the polarizing accounts of comedian Kathy Griffin, author Jordan Petersen, and conservative satire publication The Babylon Bee, following the return of former President Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The next month, Twitter seemingly took on the free press, as a slew of tech and Musk-critical journalists were summarily suspended and then reinstated to the site shortly after. In January, the site reinstated the account of white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
That lack of discrimination (potentially influenced by projected revenue brought to the site by these controversial figures) is part of the problem. Following initial rumors of Musk’s takeover, human rights groups published warning after warning about the potential for unadulterated hate speech proliferating on a poorly moderated site. In the first 24 hours of Musk’s Twitter, researchers had already reported steep spikes in hate speech, with users testing the limits of the new “free speech absolutist” owner.
And those numbers are still going up, especially for members of the LGBTQ community. According to a new report by Amnesty International, the social media giant has seen a sharp increase in instances of hate speech toward both LGBTQ activists and LGBTQ rights organizations.
Based on a survey of 11 LGBTQ organizations with large Twitter followings and nine high-profile LGBTQ advocates, 65 percent of respondents said that there is “more hateful and abusive speech on Twitter compared to other platforms they use” and 88 percent of them had received no support from Twitter to mitigate or remove abusive content. Around 60 percent of organizations said the presence of hate speech has impacted how they use the platform, but the problem seems to be more severe for individuals — eight of the nine activists reported Twitter’s practices have changed how they tweet.
“Twitter considers itself a ‘common digital town square,’ yet it’s a town square where LGBTQ+ voices are all too often shouted down and silenced by constant hateful speech and harassment,” wrote Michael Kleinman, Senior Director of Technology and Human Rights at Amnesty International USA. “According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, all companies have a responsibility to respect human rights — it’s disappointing, to say the least, to hear that the problem of hateful and abusive speech on Twitter is only getting worse.”
In July, LGBTQ organization GLAAD issued its “Social Media Safety Index,” which gave Twitter a failing grade at instituting, and enforcing, policies that protect users from threats, hate speech, harassment, violence, and attacks based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. In the era of Twitter 2.0, the grade can’t have improved — Musk gutted the platform’s Trust and Safety Council in December, as well as its Global Human Rights team.
This further raises the question: If the presence of accounts spreading disinformation and hate speech brings in money, what further incentive is there for a profit-driven CEO like Musk to enforce any kind of safety precautions?
While the answer is being weighed by executives, users have to shoulder the burden, stepping up where the site is failing and acting to protect themselves online.