In an update to its abuse and harassment page, the X deadnaming and misgendering policy which was quietly removed last year has been equally quietly reinstated …
X deadnaming and misgendering policy
Back in the days when it was called Twitter, the company had a Hateful Conduct policy which listed behavior which was not acceptable on the platform.
We are committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized. For this reason, we prohibit behavior that targets individuals or groups with abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category.
This was supplemented by a separate document which defined abuse and harrassment, and gave specific examples. These included deadnaming (referring to transgender people by their former name) and misgendering (deliberately using pronouns which conflict with someone’s known gender identity).
ArsTechnica reported that this section of the document was quietly removed in April of last year – but that it has now been reinstated. The policy now includes:
We will reduce the visibility of posts that purposefully use different pronouns to address someone other than what that person uses for themselves, or that use a previous name that someone no longer goes by as part of their transition.
The company says that it will only accept reports of these behaviors from the target person.
Given the complexity of determining whether such a violation has occurred, we must always hear from the target to determine if a violation has occurred.
LGBTQ advocacy non-profit GLAAD (Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) notes, however, that this is a downgrading of Twitter’s original policy.
Senior director of social media safety Jenni Olson told Ars that […] the company’s decision to reduce the visibility of attacks—rather than explicitly ban them—is still viewed by GLAAD as a step back from the stronger protections that users enjoyed on Twitter for years.
X not doing well in hate speech lawsuit
When the Center for Countering Digital Hate started tracking increases in hate speech on X after Musk took ownership of the company, he responded by filing a lawsuit, blaming the CCDH for the loss of millions of dollars of ad revenue.
The lawsuit in part hinged on claiming a breach of contract, as the tracking was done using the login of another nonprofit, the European Climate Foundation, which had access to an API allowing data to be downloaded. X claimed at this breach put the security of user data at risk.
Wired reports that the judge in the case doesn’t appear receptive to this part of the claim.
Judge Breyer pressed X’s attorney, Jonathan Hawk, on that claim, questioning how scraping posts that were publicly available could violate users’ safety or the security of their data. “If [CCDH] had scraped and discarded the information, or scraped that number and never issued a report, or scraped and never told anybody about it. What would be your damages?” Breyer asked X’s legal team.
Breyer also pointed out that it would have been impossible for anyone agreeing to Twitter’s terms of service in 2019, as the European Climate Foundation did when it signed up for Brandwatch, years before Musk’s purchase of the platform, to anticipate how its policies would drastically change later […]
“Twitter had a policy of removing tweets and individuals who engaged in neo-Nazi, white supremacists, misogynists, and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories. That was the policy of Twitter when the defendant entered into its terms of service,” Breyer said. “You’re telling me at the time they were excluded from the website, it was foreseeable that Twitter would change its policies and allow these people on? And I am trying to figure out in my mind how that’s possibly true, because I don’t think it is.”
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