X

Twitter now has a timeline to go after bullies and trolls

For the first time, the social network makes its safety calendar public. Now you can see when it plans to enforce rules against abusive behavior.

Dara Kerr Former senior reporter
Dara Kerr was a senior reporter for CNET covering the on-demand economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado, went to school in New York City and can never remember how to pronounce gif.
Dara Kerr
2 min read
twitter

After facing criticism for allowing abusive behavior, Twitter aims to be more transparent.

Twitter

To tackle abusive behavior, Twitter has put a specific timeline in place.

By the end of October? Expanding the definition of nonconsensual nudity and creating an appeals process for people whose accounts have been suspended.

In November? A number of actions, including "educating abusers about our rules" and hiding "hateful imagery and hate symbols" behind a sensitive image warning. The calendar continues into December and January. Twitter released it Thursday, a day after CEO Jack Dorsey had said it was on the way.

"We just decided to share our internal safety work streams & shipping calendar," Dorsey tweeted Wednesday. "This makes us feel uncomfortable because it's a work in progress & rough, but it's the right thing to do: we believe showing our thinking and work in real-time will help build trust."

Twitter has been under fire for allowing abusive and hateful behavior on its platform, which has 328 million users. Some particularly ugly episodes occurred last year when a hate mob attacked Leslie Jones, a star of the "Ghostbusters" movie. The blowback against the social media company culminated last Friday in a high-profile #WomenBoycottTwitter protest.

In a series of tweets over the past week, Dorsey has promised changes are on the way.

Watch this: Twitter now has a calendar for tackling abuse and trolls

On Tuesday, Twitter gave its Trust and Safety Council a list of new rules it plans to enforce to curb abuse. The modifications include giving users who've received unwanted sexual advances on the social network the power to report them. Twitter is also prohibiting "creep shots" and hidden camera content.

Twitter's Thursday release of its safety calendar is a step toward being more transparent. The calendar spells out upcoming changes to the company's rules. It also includes information on how Twitter communicates with people who violate the rules and how its enforcement process works.

Some of the new line items on the calendar include suspending accounts of violent groups, along with not letting people have abusive or hateful usernames. Twitter also said it will update the way it reviews reports from people who say they witness rule violations.

"We're updating our approach to make Twitter a safer place," the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. "This won't be a quick or easy fix, but we're committed to getting it right. Far too often in the past we've said we'd do better and promised transparency but have fallen short in our efforts. Starting today, you can expect regular, real-time updates about our progress."

CNET Magazine: Check out a sampling of the stories you'll find in CNET's newsstand edition.

The Smartest StuffInnovators are thinking up new ways to make you -- and the world around you -- smarter.