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Twitter has at last vowed to change its policies on harassment and hate speech.
On Friday, thousands of women boycotted the platform in solidarity with Rose McGowan, an actress whose account was temporarily suspended. Others used the opportunity to highlight women of color with #WOCAffirmation, pointing out that it often isn’t until a white woman is silenced that we’re willing to rally for change.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey penned a thread in response to the backlash.
“Today we saw voices silencing themselves and voices speaking out because we’re *still* not doing enough,” he tweeted. “We decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them. New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence.”
4/ Today we saw voices silencing themselves and voices speaking out because we’re *still* not doing enough.
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017
6/ We decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them.
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017
7/ New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence.
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017
While Twitter says it suspended McGowan for sharing someone’s private contact information, the move came after she spent a week speaking out about assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The #WomenBoycottTwitter movement quickly became representative of the widespread hate speech prevailing on the app while marginalized voices are silenced.
Others argue that it is the height of white feminism to stand behind McGowan while ignoring so many past injustices on the app, like when Leslie Jones was mercilessly harassed for the color of her skin.
Regardless of whether the boycott was problematic or well-intentioned, users have been begging Twitter to reexamine its policies on hate speech, harassment, and threatened violence for years, culminating in the 2016 election. Hopefully this will serve as a wake-up call to the app’s founders about how much more screening is needed to make Twitter a safer space for users.
