Twitter to ban 'dehumanizing' comments with user help

Twitter on Tuesday reached out to users for help crafting a ban on comments that dehumanise people and set the stage for real-world violence.

A policy change that Twitter has been working on for several months is intended to broaden hateful content restrictions at the service to include barring tweets dehumanizing people based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other social grouping.

"Language that makes someone less than human can have repercussions off the service, including normalizing serious violence," Vijaya Gadde and Del Harvey of the Twitter trust and safety team said in a blog post.

"We want to expand our hateful conduct policy to include content that dehumanizes others based on their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target."
Dorsey, appearing before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on foreign influence campaigns on social media, said the messaging service was set up to function as a "public square" but failed to deal with "abuse, harassment, troll armies, propaganda through bots."