Following an announcement last month, Twitter has now made changes to its policies in order to combat hateful speech and abusive content. Any username or profile that contains any explicitly vicious subject matter, or accounts associated with hate groups both on and off its platform, will undergo stricter penalties. Having been criticized for its particularly lax stance towards user-generated content, Twitter will now enforce stricter guidelines and do a better job of responding to reports of abuse.
Twitter now forbids any threat of violence, death, or disease upon any one individual or group of people, which applies to accounts that associate themselves with organizations that "use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes." Any tweet that glorifies violence in any form will now be required to be removed immediately at Twitter's request, and failure to do so or repeated infractions will lead to permanent account suspension.
Twitter will also permanently suspend any account whose profile information includes threats, racism/sexism, or incites fear/belittles people in less than human terms. Furthermore, hateful logos, symbols or other imagery that promotes any form of hostility towards any particular individual or group of people is now prohibited. If any such images appear in profile photos or account headers, they must be removed.
However, one notable exception to the rule excludes political figures and government organizations, giving world leaders such as President Trump carte blanche to post anything without penalty.
