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Last year, Twitter updated its hateful conduct rules and banned “dehumanizing speech” against “protected groups” which at the time included just religious groups.
Now Twitter has announced that this policy is being expanded to include three more protected groups: age, disease, and disability.
Shortly after the policy was announced, many Twitter users suggested that this means making fun of people based on their age and specifically tweeting out “OK boomer” is now going to be banned and considered “hate speech” under these new rules.
https://twitter.com/free_kai/status/1235663073878241280
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1235653054105411584
https://twitter.com/jo_bromilow/status/1235643404291317760
UPDATE: Twitter spokesperson confirmed to Reclaim The Net that their rules won’t ban the use of the phrase “OK boomer.”
The announcement of this policy comes just a few days after rapper Zuby had his Twitter account locked for responding “OK, dude” to a transgender activist – a tweet that Twitter deemed to be in violation of its hateful conduct rules.
Many users slammed Twitter for flagging the tweet and pointed out that dude is a unisex term and that the tweet was not hateful.
The sudden update to this hateful conduct policy also comes on the same day that Twitter has introduced its new misinformation policy which is likely to kill some memes on the platform.
Leaked documents suggest that a social credit style fact-checking system where Twitter users are encouraged to label “harmfully misleading” tweets in exchange for “points” may also be introduced as part of this new misinformation policy.
Overall these new hateful conduct and misinformation rules have left many Twitter users fearing that they will no longer be able to share memes, make fun of people, or share differences of opinion on the site.
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