Twitter Announces New Safety Rules After Rose McGowan-Sparked Protest

The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, announced that the social platform would enforce new rules around the unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups and the tweets that endorse and glorify violence. This was in response to the magnitude of women who participated in #WomenBoycottTwitter movement in protest of their voices being silenced, on Friday. It happened so that Twitter listened. The next few weeks will see a change in the way that Twitter will enforce their rules by taking a more aggressive stance in doing so. Dorsey said that the team has been involved in upgrading the rules of use for the past few months and had focused their efforts on making critical decisions. He ended his series of tweets by saying that more information would be rolled out next week.

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

2/ We prioritized this in 2016. We updated our policies and increased the size of our teams. It wasn’t enough.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

3/ In 2017 we made it our top priority and made a lot of progress.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

4/ Today we saw voices silencing themselves and voices speaking out because we’re *still* not doing enough.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

5/ We’ve been working intensely over the past few months and focused today on making some critical decisions.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

6/ We decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

7/ New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

8/ These changes will start rolling out in the next few weeks. More to share next week.

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2017

The movement gained steam when Rose McGowan’s account was locked by Twitter on accounts that she posted a personal phone number. McGowan has spoken about being a victim of sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein and after her account was locked, she shared posts from others who believed her and also believed that her account was locked because she spoke up against powerful male actors, including Ben Affleck, in the wake of all the talk about sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein. There were many celebrities who joined McGowan’s protest, including Alyssa Milano, Gina Rodriguez, Ava DuVernay, Kathy Griffin, Chrissy Teigen and Amber Tamblyn.

We were silent. And they heard us. #WomenBoycottTwitter https://t.co/q4UhksvDe8

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 14, 2017

@jack start by immediately removing RICHARD SPENCER’S VERIFICATION. I heard you have some power in these matters. #WOC #POC #NONAZIS

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 14, 2017

After the announcement about the new rules was made, Alyssa Milano tweeted that when the women were silent, Twitter heard them. Indeed, their silence proved to be the loudest voice among the crowd. On the other hand, Rose McGowan demanded that Jack Dorsey should remove the verification from Richard Spencer’s account, given the fact that he has some powers when it comes to granting people verification on his platform. Richard Spencer is an American White Supremacist and the President of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank.