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Journalism of Courage
Starting February 1, Twitter will allow users to appeal account suspensions and be evaluated under the social media platform’s new criteria for reinstatement, the company has said. Going forward, the platform said it will take “less severe action” against accounts and reserve suspensions for “severe” or “repeat” violations of its policies.
In December last year, the company said that it had identified several policies where the permanent suspension was a “disproportionate action” for breaking Twitter rules. It then started reinstating accounts that were suspended for violations of these policies.
On Friday it said that it did not reinstate accounts that engaged in illegal activity, threats of harm or violence, large-scale spam and platform manipulation, or when there was no recent appeal to have the account reinstated.
“Going forward, we will take less severe actions, such as limiting the reach of policy-violating Tweets or asking you to remove Tweets before you can continue using your account. Account suspension will be reserved for severe or ongoing, repeat violations of our policies,” Twitter said.
Severe violations include but are not limited to: engaging in illegal content or activity, inciting or threatening violence or harm, privacy violations, platform manipulation or spam, and engaging in targeted harassment of our users.
Twitter has had a topsy-turvy ride in terms of account suspensions and reinstatements since Elon Musk took over the company last October. In November, the platform reinstated Donald Trump’s account on the basis of a poll run by Musk, where users on the social media platform voted — by a slim majority — to lift a ban on the former US president placed more than a year ago.
Trump’s re-platforming on Twitter by means of a user poll came despite Musk’s earlier insistence that the company will form a content moderation council and “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes”. So far, it is unclear whether the council has been formed.
Around the time that Musk took over Twitter in October, rapper Kanye West, who was banned from the platform for making antisemitic remarks, also had his account reinstated. However, in December, his account was suspended yet again for violating the platform’s rules prohibiting incitement to violence.
In what marked a day of widespread account suspensions and sudden U-turns, last December Twitter banned accounts of a number of prominent journalists in the United States, from outlets like New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, for publishing public data about the billionaire’s plane. A few hours post the ban, Musk ran a Twitter poll asking if he should reinstate the journalists’ accounts, and did so after close to 59 per cent users on the poll voted in favour of doing so.
