Twitter following outrage from users on handling cases of abuse, have rewrote its user guidelines, as part of a broader effort to tackle trolling and abuse, and to make sure users know what’s allowed on the networking service.
While the company hasn’t been clear about how it penalizes users — as a formal policy, it never commented about individual offenders, and its punishments have been rather unnoticed.
The company has published new details outlining all of the different types of punishments meted out on defaulters, albeit many users aren't aware of the many different techniques Twitter uses to try and keep people in line.
From obvious unnoticed, the punishments ranges from use of algorithm to show your tweet to fewer people, and to the rather rash lifetime ban on the service.
Twitter’s enforcement strategy is that it uses a number of data set to determine the severity of punishment to dole out. And one of the major contributing factors is how newsworthy a tweet is, which requires subjective analysis.
It also looks at other criteria like who reported the tweet, and if or not the offending user has a history of abuse or harassment on the platform.
And based on severity of offense, Twitter can temporarily lock you out of your account until you verify your identity — using either a phone number or email, which eliminates the possibility of anonymous trolling.
Twitter verifies notable users of public interest so that you know you’re hearing from the real person, not an imposter. The company, now is saying, formally, that it can take away the verified status if a person violate the company’s rules.
