To be honest this looks more like a PR stunt designed to alleviate issues some users have with the Twitter platform being used as a tool to disseminate “hateful” content. There has never been anything stopping Twitter from checking someones publicly available online activities. Twitter can and has banned users for no reason at all, their ToS is very clear on that. I’m not sure what this new policy is supposed to address and how.
Either way the writing is on the wall and has been for a long time. Popular services like Twitter and Facebook aren’t enjoying the constant negative press surrounding their user’s activities. Do a news search for the word ‘Twitter’ or ‘Facebook’ and most press coverage concerns harassment, blackmail and bullying. So this kind of public announcement is the same as Coke unveiling another new low calorie drink to show they care about their customers wellbeing. I don’t support or condemn this decision because this should be the expected behavior for a company with a public image; “We care about you, really.”
So yeah, this is just another PR stunt by Twitter designed to show the small but vocal minority (SJWs, feminists etc) that they’re actively working to sanitize their platform. It’s a token gesture, but it gives you a good indication where Twitter exec minds are at.
I think it’s a dumb move. Eventually these concerned users will just expect that submitting proof of hateful activity external to Twitter will result in a ban immediately. And that will be the point where this policy can and will be exploited for whatever reason (aka by people like us). Obviously Twitter can verify who is responsible for the content posted on their service, but how exactly do they plan to do the same with external content? There is nothing stopping anybody from making a bogus account that mimics a Twitter user on an external service then posting “hate speech”. Does Twitter really have the manpower to check each and every case in detail? I doubt it. I think this will probably blow up in their face in the long run.
When regular users with a small or medium sized amount of followers start getting banned because Twitter can’t fulfil this new policy without casualties then people will jump ship. Twitter will be become resource solely for corporate entities, celebrities and other easily verifiable entities to use. Another service will pick up the slack and make a similar platform to cater to the dejected Twitter middle class and eventually the SJW’s will be left with a sterile version of Twitter designed for big business and mass media.
What scares me more is the thought of what happens after these companies run out of ways to convince these concerned users they’re working to make their service a ‘safe space’. I can imagine in the next decade big public companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla etc forming a consortium to pressure governments into enacting laws that turn them into the gatekeepers of the Internet, letting them brand competing services as ‘unsafe’. Right now there’s nothing stopping me or anyone else from making a Twitter rip-off, but one day that may not be the case. That’s when I’ll start to worry about this kind of thing.
