Twitter expands hate speech rules to include race, ethnicity

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Twitter Inc on Wednesday expanded its coverage barring hateful speech to include ”language that dehumanises individuals on the idea of race, ethnicity and nationwide origin,” it mentioned in an announcement.

The firm banned speech that dehumanises others based mostly on faith or caste final 12 months and up to date the rule in March to add age, incapacity and illness to the checklist of protected classes.

Civil rights group Color of Change, a part of a coalition of advocacy organisations which were pushing tech firms to scale back hate speech on-line, known as the modifications “essential concessions” following years of out of doors strain.

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A Twitter spokeswoman mentioned the corporate had deliberate from the beginning to add new classes to the coverage over time after testing to guarantee it will probably persistently implement up to date rules.

In an announcement, Color Of Change Vice President Arisha Hatch criticised Twitter for failing to replace the coverage earlier than November’s presidential election, regardless of repeated warnings by the advocacy teams about violent and dehumanizing speech.

Hatch additionally mentioned Twitter has declined to present transparency into how its content material moderators are skilled and the efficacy of its synthetic intelligence in figuring out content material that violates the coverage.

“The jury is still out for a company with a spotty track record of policy implementation and enforcing its rules with far-right extremist users,” she mentioned.

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“Void of hard evidence the company will follow through, this announcement will fall into a growing category of too little, too late PR stunt offerings.”