To "Serve A Healthy Public Conversation," Twitter Addresses "Dehumanizing Languages"

Staying relevant in a world that is not relevant, is certainly irrelevant. That, thanks to free speech.

The internet is full of people, and by hiding behind their desks and screens, they can practically emotionally damage others that are miles away. Social media networks are just full of these people, and Twitter is taking further steps to prevent those people from thriving on its platform.

Twitter has 'Twitter Rules' that apply to everyone who uses Twitter. In the past, the company created the rules involving research and partnership with its Trust and Safety Council and other experts. This is to ensure that its policies can best server all users.

However, that didn't really happen.

For that reason, "we’re trying something new by asking everyone for feedback on a policy before it’s part of the Twitter Rules," said Twitter's Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead, Vijaya Gadde and Twitter's VP of Trust and Safety, Del Harvey.

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This is part of our singular effort to increase the health of the public conversation on our service and we hope this gives you a better understanding of how new rules are created. We want you to be part of this process

The strategy involves altering its hateful conduct policies to prohibit "dehumanizing speech."

By doing so, Twitter intends to patch a hole in its rules against hate speech to account for tweets that don't specifically target anyone, but which are nonetheless demeaning.

Toxic Twitter

Harvey defines dehumanizing speech as:

Language that treats others as less than human. Dehumanization can occur when others are denied of human qualities (animalistic dehumanization) or when others are denied of human nature (mechanistic dehumanization). Examples can include comparing groups to animals and viruses (animalistic), or reducing groups to their genitalia (mechanistic)."

Here, the company is asking users for feedback on whether the rules are clear.

Twitter is doing this to better address this hole as part of its work to "serve a healthy public conversation."

Twitter does its research based on the rules made by Harvard researchers, as well as the Dangerous Speech Project. The latter claiming that it has "been in touch with Facebook, Twitter, Google and other internet companies as an unpaid advisor, providing ideas for diminishing DS and other harmful content online while protecting freedom of speech."

Dehumanizing speech is very common on social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and practically anything out there that allows people to post their thoughts.

Twitter isn't the first to eradicate this "dehumanizing speech". But knowing that it's platform is already plagued by trolls and haters, the move should help Twitter in moving to the right direction.

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