14 DAY TRIAL // For many years, Twitter has been known as the main source of online abuse. Trying to address this serious black spot on its reputation, Twitter is now fully committed to changing the image the public has of its service, and it started by updating its user policy to fully reflect its new anti-harassment stance.
Just don't consider the end of 2015 the moment in time when Twitter decided to put a stop to online harassment. The company was active on this topic all last year and introduced various tools during 2015 to help users fight online trolls.
During the past year, Twitter added more powerful user blocking features, better muting and reporting tools, and even updated the Twitter Safety Center.
All these tools came in handy last autumn, when Anonymous and other hacktivist groups used Twitter's enhanced and expedited reporting system to take down over 20,000 ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts.
So what did Twitter do this time? The company simply expanded its Abuse Behavior section in the site policy to include various types of behaviors its staff won't be putting up with anymore. This updated policy will help both its staff mediate account bans, but also users, who'll now be fully informed of what's acceptable on the site and what's not anymore.
Welcome back, Politwoops
On top of the new site policy, Twitter has also reached an agreement with the Sunlight Foundation regarding its Politwoops project, which the company shut down in June of 2015.
Politwoops, a website that collected controversial tweets that politicians around the world deleted, was closed down by Twitter after it violated its API policy that forbade developers to store deleted tweets outside of Twitter's own servers.
With the US elections coming up, and with Donald Trump saying one controversial thing after another, Twitter had a change of heart and decided to allow the Sunlight Foundation to reprise its former project.
The original Politwoops website is not up and running yet, but with the green light from Twitter, expect it to come back alive in the upcoming weeks.
