Twitter expands hate speech rules to include race, ethnicity and nationality

Twitter is expanding its hate speech policies to prohibit language that dehumanizes people based on their race, ethnicity or national origin.

The change comes more than six months after the social media giant banned hate speech related to age, disability and disease.

Twitter will require tweets that include hate speech regarding race, ethnicity or national origin to be deleted once they are reported. It notes that it will also continue to surface potentially violative content through detection and automation.

“If an account repeatedly breaks the Twitter Rules, we may temporarily lock or suspend the account,” Twitter stated in a blog post.

It’s worth noting that other major platforms, such as Facebook, have had rules barring this sort of hate speech for years, whereas Twitter has been somewhat slower at implementing these changes.

The social media giant says that it wants to get things right and that it has sought to “understanding of cultural nuances and ensure we are able to enforce our rules consistently” with each update to its policy.

Source: Twitter