Twitter bans ‘deadnaming’, misgendering transgender people

Updating its hateful conduct policy, Twitter recently banned misgendering or ‘deadnaming’ of transgender people along with bans on other hate speech.

Moving on from its previous policy of banning ‘repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone’, Twitter updated its hateful conduct policy last month, which was recently spotted, in which it included ban on misgendering of transgender people.

“We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” the policy stated.

Twitter referred to deadnaming as when someone uses a transgender person’s pre-transition name or uses wrong pronouns. The policy also applies for people who threaten or attack other people on basis of race, ethnicity, natural origin and such.

The policy update also included bans on using ‘media that depicts victims of the Holocaust’, ‘media that depicts lynchings’, banning imagery that includes ‘images depicting others as less than human, or altered to include hateful symbols, e.g., altering images of individuals to include animalistic features’ and various violent threats.

The update, as per The Next Web, is way more conscious recognition of the fact that some specific groups are disproportionately the target of online abuse, and in ways that are often not explicit. Twitter clarified that using hateful images or symbols in user profile images, header, live video, or bio is also prohibited.

Twitter added, “Research has shown that some groups of people are disproportionately targeted with abuse online. This includes: women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.”

Twitter concluded saying that if any such activity is detected, it will take action in which it will either ask the user to remove the violating content, serve short/long time period in read-only mode, or even permanent account suspension.