Twitter’s New Anti-Abuse Guidelines

SOCIAL CHANGE: Celebrities speaking out against cyber bullying and sexual harassment online have foisted the spotlight on social media companies in recent weeks. Last month, for instance, actress Ashley Judd said she would press charges against those who sexually harassed her via Twitter. Judd’s pronouncement followed an outcry from celebrities such as Lena Dunham and Iggy Azalea, who were also taunted on the social media network. The groundswell of bad press rattled Twitter, and on Tuesday, the company issued updated guidelines aimed at “combating abuse.” Those changes entail how Twitter enforces certain policy violations, including violent threats. “We are updating our violent threats policy so that the prohibition is not limited to ‘direct, specific threats of violence against others’ but now extends to ‘threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others,’” general counsel Vijaya Gadde said. “Our previous policy was unduly narrow and limited our ability to act on certain kinds of threatening behavior. The updated language better describes the range of prohibited content and our intention to act when users step over the line into abuse.” In order to enforce the new rules, Twitter said it is introducing an additional measure that gives its support team “the ability to lock abusive

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