Twitter published two new Help Center pages Tuesday dealing with the social network’s approach to policy development and enforcement philosophy, as well as its enforcement options.
Tuesday’s rollout marks the next step in an ongoing campaign by Twitter to clarify its policies.
The social network described its method of crafting new policies or enacting policy changes: “Creating a new policy or making a policy change requires in-depth research around trends in online behavior, developing clear external language that sets expectations around what’s allowed and creating enforcement guidance for reviewers that can be scaled across millions of tweets. While drafting policy language, we gather feedback from a variety of internal teams, as well as our Trust & Safety Council. This is vital to ensure that we are considering global perspectives around the changing nature of online speech, including how our rules are applied and interpreted in different cultural and social contexts. Finally, we train our global review teams, update the Twitter Rules and start enforcing the new policy.”
Twitter went into extensive detail on how it answers the following questions:
- Is the behavior directed at an individual or group of people?
- Has the report been filed by the target of the potential abuse or a bystander?
- Does the user have a history of violating our policies?
- What is the severity of the violation?
- Is the content a topic of legitimate public interest?
Twitter also explained the enforcement measures it explores at the tweet, direct message and account levels, going into detail on each option.
Tweet-level enforcement:
- Limiting tweet visibility
- Requiring tweet deletion
- Hiding a violating tweet while awaiting its deletion
DM-level enforcement:
- Blocking the reported violator
- Requiring DM deletion
Account-level enforcement:
- Requiring media or profile edits
- Placing an account in read-only mode
- Verifying account ownership
- Permanent suspension
Finally, the social network explained actions it may take against content that does not violate the Twitter Rules:
- Placing a tweet behind an interstitial
- Withholding a tweet or account in a country
