Twitter is promising that it will take “less severe measures” in disciplining accounts that break its rules; it will only suspend Twitter accounts that engage in “serious or ongoing, repeated violations” of its rules. Company also says it will allow anyone to appeal suspensions from February 1, and those who do will be judged against updated standards.
What will Twitter do instead of suspending your account? The “less serious actions” are things Twitter has been doing for years, such as limiting a tweet’s visibility, or telling a user to delete a tweet before they can rejoin the site. Today’s change is that Twitter promises to reach for those tools more often, instead of going straight to the ban button.
Company also says it plans to be more transparent with its enforcement actions and will be rolling out some unspecified new features next month to help with that. A possible example: CEO Elon Musk promised last year that Twitter would let you know when you got “shadow banned” and why.
Today, Twitter also seems to justify its decisions to bring those people back to Twitter, saying it “has not reinstated accounts involved in illegal activity, threats of harm or violence, large-scale spam and platform manipulation, or where no recent appeal to have the account reinstated.” Which makes it kind of odd that Trump was left back, given that Twitter said in 2021 that it has permanently suspended the former president “because of the risk of further incitement to violence”. However, it’s possible that this is because — like the genesis of the amnesty policy itself — Trump was let back because Elon wanted him back and decided to poll his own audience.
