Jul 10, 2019 12:00:00

What is the reason why Twitter has purposely stated 'no harassing tweets to religious groups'?

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In a post on their blog on July 9, 2019, Twitter announced that it will prohibit tweets for harassment against religious groups. From now on, when there is a report about the applicable tweet, the user is asked to delete it.

Updating our rules against hateful conduct
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2019/hatefulconductupdate.html

Twitter has changed the rules and put forth a new policy to ban harassing tweets for specific religious groups. An example of a banned tweet is: 'We have to exterminate a rat like a (religious organization)' 'a (religious organization) is a virus that makes the country sick' 'a (religious organization) should be punished So, there are posts such as 'It's still not enough to drive out such unclean animals' 'There are a lot of maggots like (religious groups)!'

The change in rules will be applied on July 9, 2019 on the same day, and will be deleted if there is a notification about the corresponding tweet. Also, past tweets are subject to deletion as well, but there is no account suspension that is caused directly by past tweets.

This activity reflects the request from users, and Twitter was soliciting opinions from users about measures against harassment postings in September 2018.

The Twitter Rules should be easy to understand so we're trying something new and asking you to be part of the development process. Read more and more submit feedback.

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) September 25, 2018

As a result, more than 8,000 opinions were received from over 30 countries in just two weeks.

Thank you for sharing thoughts on how we can improve the dehumanization policy. In the next few months, we'll share what we learned and the final policy. Https://t.co/RzOCic49gw

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 10, 2018

Harassment tweets have been banned from the past, but Twitter asked, 'Why are we now banned for religious groups only now?' Because it was found to be lacking in clarity and

As part of a similar effort, the rules were revised significantly in June 2019, and the text length of the rules was reduced to about one fourth of the conventional length. Even after the revision of the rules, 'aggressive act / harassment' is prohibited, but it is prohibited to post and so on by making clear the prohibition of harassment posts that treat 'religious groups' inhumanly. It is the aim of this time to aim at the line drawing of not the post.

In the future, Twitter intends to protect the 'groups that are alienated' other than religious groups, and 'Protecting the speech of those who are protected,' 'Assessing the violation considering the context,' 'The group being protected is actually In the future, it is important to consider whether the company is infringing or considering the seriousness of the infringement.