Twitter officially defines ‘abusive behavior’ as harassment persists

Twitter published its definition of “abusive behavior” in its rulebook today, with a goal we’ve heard before: to “empower people to freely express themselves” on Twitter while generally making users feel safer.

Twitter has attempted to fight harassment for years, but previous iterations of the company’s rules were rather disorganized; rules around abuse fell into different sections, and extra emphasis was placed on spammers. So, what’s changed?

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Twitter’s rules have been reorganized to include a dedicated section called “Abuse.” That’s where the company now lists much of the previous details it’s already shared about things that come under its review policy, including threats, harassment, hateful conduct, revealing private information “without express authorization and permission,” impersonation, and self-harm.

Twitter took some steps in 2015 to enforce its rules. In July, it debuted an online safety center to educate users on how to become “good digital citizens.” It also enabled a feature earlier this year that promised to make it easier to report threatening tweets to the police. And yet harassment persists.

Former chief executive Dick Costolo once wrote in an internal memo: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years … we lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.” Unfortunately, reorganizing the rules alone isn’t going to help things.

Costolo is correct in that if people aren’t feeling safe, they’re going to abandon the service and seek safer ground, perhaps with competitors like Facebook. As investors scrutinize Twitter for its sluggish growth, the company looks worse if it appears to not take public safety seriously. Announcing a reorganization of rules may help Twitter’s image, but it won’t help women and minorities feel safer on the site — unless Twitter follows through on enforcing these policies.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment about the new rules and will update if we hear back from them.