In the age of Internet when communication is just a click away, social media platforms are often caught up in the crossfire between the users who are trying to spread hate messages and those who are opposing their motion. These platforms are continuously trying to balance their plans and policies between being ‘too liberal’ and being orthodox in terms of the content that they allow. However, time and again it so happens that they fail to stop the users who take wrongful advantage of the openness of these sites for their personal agendas. Twitter, of all the social media platforms, has been failing to curb hate speech and harassment. Apparently, the micro-blogging site has even admitted that it hasn’t done a good job at preventing harassment on its platform.
But all of this is about to change in the coming weeks.
Twitter Vice President for Engineering Ed Ho in a series of tweets has acknowledged that the site hasn’t been moving fast enough in terms of making its platform a safer place. However, the site will soon be releasing ‘long overdue fixes to mute and stopping the repeat offenders’.
“Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever,” he wrote in a tweet.
“This week, we’ll tackle long overdue fixes to mute/block and stopping repeat offenders from creating new accounts,” he wrote in another tweet.
Ho further elaborated that while some of these changes would be visible, others will be less so.
Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
We heard you, we didn’t move fast enough last year; now we’re thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
We’ll be rolling out a number of product changes in the days ahead. Some changes will be visible and some will be less so.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
This week, we’ll tackle long overdue fixes to mute/block and stopping repeat offenders from creating new accounts.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
Earlier, Twitter planned a crackdown on harassment on its platform by updating its ‘Hateful conduct policy’ and giving users the liberty to block or mute the hashtags and accounts that spread hate messages. But that didn’t stop the online abusers from forming new dummy accounts and misusing Twitter.
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Prior to the US elections last year, supporters of the then Republican candidate Donald Trump actively spread hate messages on Twitter and other social media platforms targeting individuals and races, especially Islam. As hashtags like #BanMuslims, #islamterror, #IslamIsTheProblem, #BanIslam, #islamsucks, #immigrationban and #HateWomen gained popularity on Twitter, hate crimes against women, Muslims and the immigrants saw a significant increase in the country.
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If Ho’s words are to believed, Twitter could come up with an elaborate strategy that would not only prohibit hateful content but also restrict the repeat offenders from continuing their vicious cycle of hate and harassment. How Twitter plans to implement its anti-harassment strategy remains unclear. However, the new measures would prove to be a roadblock for the haters who abuse the social media platforms for their ‘nasty’ agendas.
