Twitter announces new anti-abuse rules after users boycott

They had earlier suspended actress Rose McGowan’s account prompting some users to boycott the social media giant

After some Twitter users began a 24-hour boycott of the social media platform yesterday, the company announced that it will be making changes to its anti-abuse policies.

Twitter had earlier suspended actress Rose McGowan’s account prompting some users to boycott the social media giant trending as the #WomenBoycottTwitter movement.

McGowan’s account posted a private phone number in a Tweet. She has become a vocal detractor of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was alleged to have a history of sexual abuse.



CEO Jack Dorsey eventually pledged that Twitter will take a “more aggressive stance” in enforcing its rules in the coming weeks to try and curb some of the abuse appearing on the platform.

In a series of Tweets, Dorsey responded saying that that the company recognizes that behaviour on the site silences voices and that its efforts to curb such behaviour has not been enough.

1/ We see voices being silenced on Twitter every day. We’ve been working to counteract this for the past 2 years.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

"We’ve been working intensely over the past few months and focused today on making some critical decisions,” along with suggesting that they have “decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them," he further explained.

"New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence," will be some of the changes Twitter makes to its anti-abuse policy.



In the past few months, the company has introduced some features that help filter abusive Tweets out of one’s replies including the ability to block certain keywords.

It remains to be seen whether such changes can curb abuse online, but let's not give up hope yet.

This article originally appeared on The Verge.