Twitter is closing a loophole in its rules to make it harder for users to spread hate speech and violent content. The company is updating its policies to ban links to content that promotes violence and hateful conduct.
Twitter already had rules in place barring hateful conduct and violence in tweets, but the policy didn’t extend to linked content. So users could effectively skirt Twitter’s policies by linking to content that would otherwise break the company’s rules if it was posted directly.
Our goal is to block links in a way that’s consistent with how we remove Tweets that violate our rules. We'll start taking action under these updated guidelines on Thursday, July 30.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 28, 2020
With the new policy, which goes into effect July 30, Twitter may block specific URLs from being shared on its platform, and suspend accounts that frequently share these types of links. “Our goal is to block links in a way that’s consistent with how we remove Tweets that violate our rules,” the company wrote in a statement.