On the 25th of October 2023, the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, made changes in their global Community Guidelines policy. According to the Platform Governance Archive, a data depository which automatically tracks policy changes on 18 platforms, X significantly softened its violent speech policy. In 2023, violent speech is defined by X (and Twitter in the past) as Violent Threats or wishes of harm.
Before October 30th 2023, X’s Community Guidelines said:
“X is a place where people can express themselves, learn about what’s happening, and debate global issues. However, healthy conversations can’t thrive when violent speech is used to deliver a message. As a result, we have a zero tolerance policy towards violent speech in order to ensure the safety of our users and prevent the normalization of violent actions.” (emphasis added)
Now, it reads: “X is a place where people can express themselves, learn about what’s happening, and debate global issues. However, healthy conversations can’t thrive when violent speech is used to deliver a message. As a result, we may remove or reduce the visibility of violent speech in order to ensure the safety of our users and prevent the normalization of violent actions.” (emphasis added)
The change from ‘zero tolerance’ to ‘we may remove or reduce the visibility’ is illustrated further on in the renewed Community Guidelines.
Before, X)’s moderation actions were pronounced as: “in most cases, we will immediately and permanently suspend any account that violates this policy. For less severe violations, we may instead temporarily lock you out of your account before you can Post again.” (own emphasis)
The new edition reads: “in certain cases, we will immediately and permanently suspend any account that violates this policy. However, for most violations, we may instead temporarily lock you out of your account before you can Post again.” (own emphasis)
Further on, X Community Guidelines continue to say that the violent content, in rare cases, may be made less visible but when you continue to violate the policy after receiving a warning, your account “may be permanently suspended.” The previous version of this policy said a definite “will be permanently suspended“.
The company also reformulated its definition of content that is exempted from its violent speech policy, stating that “We also allow certain cases of figures of speech, satire, or artistic expression when the context is expressing a viewpoint rather than instigating actionable violence or harm.” This represents a more precise description of exempted content than before when X stated that “We make sure to evaluate and understand the context behind the conversation before taking action.”
Source: PGMT website