Twitter claims increased enforcement of hate speech and abuse policies in last half of 2019

The report touts Twitter’s increasing efforts in enforcing its policies, including a 95% increase in accounts actioned for violating its abuse policy, a 47% increase in account locks and suspensions and a 54% increase in accounts actioned for violating hateful conduct policies, among others.The company claims its ability to “proactively” surface content violations for human review has helped it increase enforcement of its rules, along with more detailed policies, improved reporting tools and other factors.As a result, this period saw the largest increase in the number of accounts actioned under Twitter’s abuse policies — a metric that could speak to better technology, as Twitter claims, but also perhaps hints at the devolving nature of online discourse.Meanwhile, Twitter attributed the increase in actions taken on accounts demonstrating hateful conduct, in part, to its new “dehumanization policy” announced on July 9, 2019.Twitter increased enforcement of its rules in other areas during this reporting period, including the posting of sensitive media/adult content (enforcement actions were up 39%), suicide & self-harm (enforcement actions up 29%), doxxing (enforcement actions up 41%) and non-consensual nudity (enforcement actions up 109%).