On October 13, Twitter found itself in the middle of a social media storm after a number of Twitter users boycotted the platform for 24 hours. Following the boycott, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has said that his company will introduce a stronger set of rules to weed out sexual harassment, hateful symbols and violent groups from the short messaging platform.
The Twitter CEO has pledged in a series of tweets on October 14, to do more to ensure that the voices of women users on the platform will not go unheard.
He tweeted, "We see voices being silenced on Twitter every day. We've been working to counteract this for the past 2 years."
1/ We see voices being silenced on Twitter every day. We’ve been working to counteract this for the past 2 years.
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017
Dorsey also acknowledged that Twitter hasn't been doing enough to make sure people's voices are not silenced and said that the new rules will be announced next week, with the changes taking effect soon after.
8/ These changes will start rolling out in the next few weeks. More to share next week.
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017
The response comes after women supporting actress Rose McGowan chose to boycott Twitter under the hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter, after she said Twitter temporarily suspended her account for posting about alleged abuse by Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.
Twitter explained the reason for blocking McGowan's account in a tweet by @Twitter Safety, saying that one of her tweets contained a private phone number, which was in violation of Twitter's terms of service.
We have been in touch with Ms. McGowan's team. We want to explain that her account was temporarily locked because one of her Tweets included a private phone number, which violates our Terms of Service. 1/3
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 12, 2017
Meanwhile, Dorsey also said that the Twitter team is also reconsidering its verification procedure- putting out a blue tick on verified accounts. However, he also said that it's not as high a priority as enforcing rules on trolls and people putting out abusive tweets.
