Twitter says it's now going to ask everyone to comment on its policy changes, as of today – TechCrunch



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Twitter says he's going to change the way he creates rules about using his service to now also include community comments. Previously, the company followed its own policy development process, including taking into account Trust and Safety Council and various experts. Now it is said that he will try something new: he will ask his users.

according to ad this morning, Twitter says it will ask everyone to comment on a new policy before it becomes part of Twitter's official function. Rules.

This initiates this change by asking for comments on his new policy on dehumanizing language on Twitter.

Over the last three months, Twitter has been striving to create a policy that aims to "make the person less human" – which can have real repercussions, including "normalizing severe violence," says the company.

To a certain extent, dehumanizing language is covered by hateful driving policy, which deals with violence, direct attacks or threats against people such as race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, religious identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or serious illness.

However, there are still ways to be abusive on Twitter outside these guidelines, and dehumanizing language is one of them.

The new policy aims to expand the hateful driving policy to also ban the language that dehumanizes others based on "their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target," says Twitter.

However, the company does not solicit user feedback via email or Twitter.

Instead, he launched an investigation.

Available until October 9 at 6 am, the survey asks only a few questions after presenting the new language of the policy to read.

For example, it asks users to rate the clarity of the policy on a scale of one to five. It then gives you 280 characters maximum – as on Twitter – to suggest how the policy could be improved. Similarly, you have 280 characters to offer speech examples that contribute to a healthy conversation, but may violate this policy – Twitter's attempt to find loopholes or exceptions.

And this gives you 280 additional characters to offer additional comments or reflections.

You must also indicate your age, gender, (possibly) your user name and indicate if you wish to receive a follow-up email if Twitter asks you more questions about your answers.

Twitter does not say how many comments from the community will guide its decision making. He simply says that after the return, he will continue with his regular process, which spends the policy through a cross-functional working group, including members of its policy development, user research, engineering, and application teams.

The idea of ​​involving the community in policy making is a noticeable change that could get people to be more involved in defining rules, and so – perhaps! – more likely to respect them.

But Twitter's issues of abuse and hate speech on its network do not really stem from mediocre policies – its policies in fact describe quite well, in many cases what should be allowed and what should not be allowed. 39; be.

Twitter's problems tend to stem from lax application. The company has too often refused to penalize or ban users whose content is obviously detestable by nature, in order to remain an open platform for "all voices" – including those with extreme ideologies. Concrete Example: This is indeed the last of the major social platforms to ban the abusive content published by Alex Jones and his Infowars website.

Users also regularly complain about being the subject of tweets that violate the rules and rules of Twitter, but no action is taken.

It is sometimes interesting to see how much Twitter could have evolved if the moderation of the community – similar to moderation on Reddit or even moderation on the open source Twitter clone Mastodon – had been part of the Twitter service from day one. Or how would things go if marginalized groups and those who are often victims of harassment and hate speech were directly involved in building the platform in the beginning. Twitter would it be a different place?

But that's not where we are.

The new dehumanization policy that Twitter is talking about is:

Twitter's dehumanization policy

You can not dehumanize a person based on his or her belonging to an identifiable group, because this speech can lead to harm offline.

Definitions:

Dehumanization: language that treats others as less than human. Dehumanization can occur when other people are denied human qualities (animal dehumanization) or when others are deprived of human nature (mechanical dehumanization). Examples may include comparing groups of animals and viruses (animals), or reducing groups to their genitalia (mechanists).

Identifiable group: Any group of people that can be distinguished by common characteristics such as race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, sexual identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, critical illness, occupation, political beliefs or social practices.

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