Twitter rolls out Violent Speech Policy, asserts ‘zero-tolerance’ approach

The new policy, although borrowed heavily from the existing one, prohibits violent threats, wishes of harm, glorification of violence, and incitement of violence. The policy also prohibits threats to damage homes and shelters or infrastructure that are essential to civic or business activities.

In a subsequent tweet, the company maintained its zero-tolerance approach towards Violent speech adding that in most cases it will suspend any account for violating policy. For less severe violations, Twitter said that it will require the users to delete content before they can access their account again.

We’ve made a few changes to our policies around violent content and similar language. Today, we’ve officially launched our Violent Speech policy, which prohibits violent threats, wishes of harm, glorification of violence, and incitement of violence. 🧵

— Safety (@Safety) February 28, 2023

While the contents of the latest policy are similar to the existing one, it is somewhat vague and specific in equal measure. Both policies ban users for threatening or glorifying violence in most cases, however, the latest rules expand on certain scenarios and minimise others.

The platform has revised and rolled out its policy frequently in the past few years. However, this is the latest Twitter policy update after it came under the ownership of technocrat Elon Musk. In 2018, Twitter updated its safety policy to ban speech that dehumanizes anyone based on membership in an identifiable group as it can lead to offline harm.

In 2019, Twitter announced that it was expanding its harmful conduct policy. “We prohibit language that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion, caste, age, disability, disease, race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation,” read the policy.