Twitter is working to decrease the amount of “hate speech” that happens in their social media site. They have made it possible for victims and bystanders to report hate speech that fits the following description:
“specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease”
Twitter didn’t stop there, though. They added something I’ve wanted social media to make available a long time ago. They now allow the filtering out or “Muting” of notifications that contain key words, phrases, and even emojis, that you consider offensive. While you may still see these posts in your timeline, you won’t be alerted to the post even if you are tagged in it.
These major adjustments are seemingly more and more necessary due to the commonality of bullying on social media. Twitter has been in the news many times this year for different celebrities shutting down their Twitter accounts after being victims of racial or sexist bullying.
Another neat thing about the new update is that hate speech reports are handled by human moderators, not algorithms. This means that each case will be handled by trained humans and not some bot that automatically shuts down an account after too many reports.
What Parents Should Know
This update is significant because it’s anti-hate speech and anti-cyberbullying. The way young people treat each-other online can be quite volatile. It seems that the apparent anonymity of social media gives kids a sense of invulnerability and they post whatever they think. Let’s be honest though, this isn’t just kids. These changes are happening because the problem has gotten bad enough that even some of our most loved celebrities are experiencing the backlash.
Lets hope more and more social media sites begin to add these features. This will help us protect our kids and give them another way to protect themselves.