Locked Amit Shah's account due to error, restored immediately: Twitter

 Twitter on Friday stated that they had temporarily locked Union Home Minister Amit Shah's account "due to an inadvertent error" on November 12 and clarified that the decision was reversed immediately and the account restored.

However, after a while, they restored the account. "Due to an inadvertent error, we temporarily locked this account under our global copyright policies. This decision was reversed immediately and the account is fully functional," said a spokesperson of the microblogging site.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah's Twitter display picture was on Thursday removed by the microblogging site, in response to a "report from the copyright holder".

Clicking on Shah's Display Picture on his verified handle showed a blank page with the message: "Media not displayed. This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder."

Twitter's copyright policy states: "In general, the photographer and not the subject of a photograph is the actual rights holder of the resulting photograph.

Twitter broadens crackdown on 'dehumanising' comments as coronavirus rages

As coronavirus fears continued to mount on Thursday, Twitter expanded its ban on "dehumanising language" to include disease.

A rule barring such hate speech targeting religious groups now applies to "language that dehumanises on the basis of age, disability, or disease," the Twitter safety team said in an online post.

"Our primary focus is on addressing the risks of offline harm, and research shows that dehumanising language increases that risk," it said.

Twitter will delete tweets already posted that break the rules, relying on users to report offending comments.

Examples of rule-breaking tweets included posts that refer to people with a disease as "rats that contaminate everyone around them" or people with a particular disability as "subhuman."

Twitter and other social networks have been struggling with removing hateful and abusive content while remaining open platforms.

The online services have also faced accusations that the curbs suppress some political views.

Indian-born Twitter head who decides on blocking tweets, even Trump's

Whenever somebody on Twitter takes issue with the network’s rules or content policies, they almost always resort to the same strategy: They send a tweet to @jack.

A quick scan of Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey’s mentions show just how often he’s called upon to lay down the law for the service he helped create. But what users don’t know is that they’re imploring the wrong Twitter executive. While Dorsey is the company’s public face, and the final word on all things product and strategy, the taxing job of creating and enforcing Twitter’s rules don’t actually land on the CEO’s shoulders. Instead, that falls to Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde.

As Twitter’s head of legal and policy issues, Gadde has one of the most difficult jobs in technology: Her teams write and enforce the rules for hundreds of millions of internet users. If people break the rules, the offending tweets can be removed, users can be suspended, or in extreme cases booted off Twitter altogether. Dorsey may have to answer for Twitter’s decisions, but he’s taken a hands-off approach to creating and enforcing its content policies.

“He rarely weighs in on an individual enforcement decision,” Gadde said in a recent interview. “I can’t even think of a time. I usually go to him and say, ‘this is what’s going to happen.’”

That leaves Gadde, 45, as the end of the line when it comes to account enforcement — a delicate position in a world where Twitter’s rules are both an affront to free speech and an invitation to racists and bigots, depending on who’s tweeting at you. “No matter what we do we’ve been accused of bias,” Gadde said. “Leaving content up, taking content down — that’s become pretty much background noise.”

Like most corporate lawyers, Gadde generally operates in the background herself, though her influence has helped shape Twitter for most of the past decade. A graduate of Cornell University and New York University Law School, Gadde spent almost a decade at a Bay Area-based law firm working with tech startups before she joined the social-media company in 2011. Her eight-plus years at Twitter are about equal to the amount of time Dorsey has worked there over the years.

But as Twitter’s role in global politics has increased, so has Gadde’s visibility. She was in the Oval Office when Dorsey met with US President Donald Trump last year, and joined the CEO when he met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2018. When Dorsey posted a photo with the Dalai Lama from that trip, Gadde stood between the two men, holding the Dalai Lama’s hand. InStyle just put her on “The Badass 50,” an annual list of women changing the world. “Vijaya defines the word,” tweeted Twitter Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland.

When Gadde first joined Twitter, the internet was a different place. At the time, a lot of politicians were just getting familiar with the platform. Trump primarily used his Twitter to share announcements about his TV appearances (though this would quickly change). The official presidential account, @POTUS, wouldn’t even come into existence until 2015, under then-President Barack Obama.

When Gadde took over as general counsel in 2013, the social-media service had an “everything goes” mentality. A year prior, one of Twitter’s product managers in the UK famously said that Twitter viewed itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” a label later repeated by then-CEO Dick Costolo. The company simply “let the tweets flow,” said one former employee.

That freedom is part of what drew Gadde to Twitter in the first place. An immigrant from India, Gadde moved to the US as a child and grew up in east Texas, where her dad worked as a chemical engineer on oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, before moving to New Jersey in middle school. “I was the only Indian child most of my education until I went to college,” she says now. “You feel voiceless. And I think that that’s kind of what drew me to Twitter — this platform that gives you a voice, and gives you a community and gives you power.”

Twitter’s commitment to giving everyone a voice, though, has also come with a general reluctance to take it away. Twitter’s decisions in recent years to ban certain users, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and far-right media troll Milo Yiannopoulos, were news in part because Twitter’s decisions to act were so uncharacteristic. Gadde acknowledges the change, saying that the company has come to realize in recent years the responsibility it has to protect the safety of its users, including when they’re not using the product. “I would say that the company has shifted its approach dramatically (since I started),” she said.

Perhaps no user presents a bigger quagmire for Gadde and her team than Trump, the platform’s most famous user, whose tweets often push the boundaries of Twitter’s rules. The president’s habit of blasting messages to his 70.9 million followers has taken on a new vigor thanks to a looming impeachment trial and re-election bid. Following the US drone strike in early January that killed a top Iranian general, Trump threatened Iran with military force in a number of tweets, including the targeting of cultural sites. That prompted many observers, including some former Twitter employees, to ask why he hadn’t been suspended — a cycle that has played out several times following other Trump tirades.

Last month, Trump attacked his Democratic rivals, blasted Congress over impeachment proceedings, and even mocked teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. According to a USA Today analysis, his tweets contain more negative language than ever. The study looked at whether Trump tweeted words with positive or negative connotations, and found he “is posting fewer tweets with words that convey joy, anticipation and trust, and more that convey anger.” Trump sent or retweeted more than 1,050 messages in December, according to Hootsuite — more than any other month since taking office.

“The way he uses social media is a reflection of just how unusual a candidate, and now a president, Trump is. A big part of that is that he breaks all the rules,” said Patrick Egan, a professor of politics and public policy at New York University. “Something that a lot of people really like about him is that he says the kind of things he’s not supposed to say, and of course that’s exactly the kind of thing that can get you into trouble on social media.”

Inside Twitter, Trump’s tweets are a frequent topic of conversation among employees, and Gadde’s authority also means that she has the unique job of punishing the world’s most famous tweeter — should it ever come to that. “My team has the responsibility to do that with every single individual who uses Twitter, whether it’s the president of a country or it’s an activist or it’s somebody we don’t know,” she said. “I honestly do my best to treat everyone with that same degree of respect.”

Twitter has so far decided that Trump hasn’t crossed any lines, but the company is prepared for such a scenario. While it’s unlikely that Twitter would ever suspend a well-known politician — the company also has a newsworthiness policy, which means it’s less likely to take action on tweets from elected officials — it’s devised another penalty for world leaders: A warning screen unveiled last summer that hides a tweet from public view and limits its distribution, but still allows people to view the tweet with the click of a button. It’s a way to publicly acknowledge that a politician has violated Twitter’s rules while admitting what they said is too newsworthy to be taken down. “It’s preserving a record of what is said in the public interest,” Gadde explained.

The process is designed like this: A content moderator, who may be a third-party contractor, reviews a tweet that has been flagged and determines whether it violates Twitter’s rules. If they decide that it does, moderators can usually enforce punishment at this stage, but Twitter requires a second layer of review for offenders who are considered public figures — in this case, a verified politician with more than 100,000 followers, Gadde said.

The tweet is then sent to Twitter’s trust and safety team, and if they also agree that the post violates the rules, Twitter convenes a special group of employees from across the company to review it. This group, about a half-dozen people from various teams, is meant to bring in a diverse set of perspectives, Gadde explained. That panel then makes a recommendation to Del Harvey, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, and her boss, Gadde, for a final decision.

Barring some kind of emergency, using the label will ultimately be Gadde’s call. “Vijaya has a young kid still, so she’s very used to being woken up any hour, which is helpful,” Harvey joked to a group of reporters last summer.

Gadde won’t go so far as to say the new warning label was created with Trump in mind — “We try to think of these things globally and not just about the United States,” she said — but added that even though the screen, referred to internally as the Public Interest Interstitial, hasn’t been used since its debut last June, it will eventually make an appearance. Gadde said Twitter has used the newsworthiness policy a “handful” of times in the past as justification for leaving offending tweets up. But the company didn’t have the warning label back then, so the general public didn’t know anything had even been discussed behind the scenes, she said. “We know it happens, and that it will happen.”

Twitter actually pointed to this policy in September 2017 when answering questions about the decision to leave up a tweet from Trump that appeared to threaten North Korea with nuclear war. Twitter also has a policy against threats of violence. A White House spokesman, Steven Groves, declined to answer questions about Trump’s use of Twitter.

Historically, Twitter’s rules around free speech have been so lax that a number of celebrities and journalists, including singer Lizzo, actress Millie Bobby Brown and New York Times writer Maggie Haberman, have stepped away from the service — at least temporarily — with many citing bullying and harassment. U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, a former Democratic candidate for president, thought Twitter’s enforcement weak enough that she implored the company to suspend Trump in a letter in October, saying he uses his account to obstruct justice and intimidate people, including the whistle-blower whose report ultimately led to his impeachment. Twitter responded that Trump’s tweets didn’t break the rules.

The newsworthiness exemption gives Twitter a lot of wiggle room when it comes to removing high-profile tweets, but Gadde said the point of the warning label, and the company’s attempt to explain it, are part of a broader effort to be more transparent about how and why the company makes decisions -- something she admits hasn’t always been clear. As Twitter has grown, so has the company’s understanding that it can’t simply sit by and let people tweet whatever they want, Gadde said. It’s one of the many ways her job has evolved over the years.

“We’re trying to do so much more of our work in public,” she said. “I want people to trust this platform.”

Twitter to remove accounts inactive for 6 months, free up usernames: Report

Micro blogging site Twitter is sending out emails to owners of dormant accounts with a warning to either sign in by December 11 or the account username will be freed.

Twitter users who have not logged in for six months or more will receive the email alert from the company.

"As part of our commitment to serve the public conversation, we're working to clean up inactive accounts to present more accurate, credible information people can trust across Twitter.

"Part of this effort is encouraging people to actively log-in and use Twitter when they register an account, as stated in our inactive accounts policy," a Twitter spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Verge on Tuesday.

The accounts will, however, not be removed at once. The process is said to take place over the course of several months.

As far as bot accounts are concerned, Twitter says they should be safe as long as they are active.

This doesn't just affect people who've abandoned Twitter; it also stands to have an enormous impact on accounts belonging to the deceased, the report added.

What ads are political? Twitter struggles with a definition

The Alzheimer’s Association, a health care advocacy group, recently spent $84,000 on ad campaigns on Twitter. One campaign had a singular purpose: To persuade people to ask Congress for larger investments in medical research for the disease.

Now the nonprofit is worried about whether those messages will still fly. That’s because Twitter announced last month that it would soon prohibit all political ads from its platform — and, depending on whom you ask, pushing lawmakers for money for medical research could be seen as a political cause.

The Alzheimer’s Association was so concerned that it contacted Twitter this month to express misgivings about the political ads ban. “We’re not really sure how it’s going to impact us,” said Mike Lynch, a spokesman for the group. “A lot of what we do is issue advertising, so it really depends on how they define political advertising.”

The Alzheimer’s Association is one of many organisations that have put pressure on Twitter over its prohibition of political ads, which is set to start next Friday. The problem is that while campaign ads from candidates are clearly political, other messages that deal with hot-button issues such as abortion, school choice and climate change may or may not cross that line.

That has set off a scramble within Twitter to define what constitutes a political ad. Twitter’s advertising executives have held meetings in Washington with public relations and free speech groups to debate the situation. And the company has fended off public criticism about the ban, including from Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts who is running for president. Last week, Warren said Twitter’s new ad policy would prevent climate advocacy groups from holding corporations accountable.

On Friday, after weeks of discussions, Twitter rolled out a formal definition of what it considers to be a political ad. Under the official policy, Twitter said ads that discuss elections, candidates, parties and other overtly political content would be prohibited. For ads that refer to causes generally and that are placed by organizations and not politicians or political candidates, Twitter said it would place restrictions on them but not ban them outright.

The restrictions included removing advertisers’ ability to target specific audiences, a practice known as “micro targeting.” The ads also cannot mention specific legislation, Twitter said.

“It’s a big change for us as a company but one we believe is going to make our service, and political advertising in the world, better,” Vijaya Gadde, who leads Twitter’s legal, policy, trust and safety divisions, said in a call on Friday to introduce the policy.

Twitter’s unveiling of its political ads policy did little to mollify its critics, such as conservatives who have said the barring of such ads is an attempt to suppress right-wing voices. “Whatever they come up with, we fully expect Twitter to continue to censor, block, or to incur ‘bugs’ that will unfairly silence President Trump and conservatives,” said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director.

Some super PACs and political groups said Twitter’s decision disrupted the political advertising strategy and budget they had already mapped out for the 2020 poll. “Changing the rules halfway through is really dangerous,” said Danielle Butterfield, the director of paid media for Priorities USA, one of the largest Democratic super PACs. “A lot of organisations are going to have to look back at their strategy and figure out how to adjust, especially in the middle of the cycle.”

She said her group had used ads on Twitter to flag stories about the economy under the Trump administration to local reporters in swing states.

Twitter finds itself in a delicate situation because its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, decided last month that the social media service would no longer host political ads. In a series of tweets on October 30, Dorsey said political ads presented challenges to civic discourse and added that he believed the reach of political messages “should be earned, not bought.”

His declaration contrasted with that of Twitter’s rival, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said last month that he planned to allow political ads on the social network — even if they are inaccurate or contain lies — because such ads are newsworthy and should remain for free speech reasons. Warren and others have pilloried Zuckerberg for his stance, saying he is running a “disinformation-for-profit machine.”

Dorsey, though, was immediately praised by politicians — including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York — for taking a stand against political ads.

At the time, Dorsey defined political ads as those sponsored by candidates or that discussed political issues. He said some ads, such as those promoting voter registration, would be permitted as exceptions. Dorsey, who has since been traveling in Africa, was unavailable for comment on Friday.

His pronouncements quickly kicked up a ruckus among nonprofits, lobbyists and others, who said they feared they would no longer be able to run issue-based ads on Twitter because it was unclear if their messages would be considered political.

“The policy would tilt the playing field,” said Eric Pooley, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental advocacy group. “Nonprofit organizations need to be able to communicate to the public. That’s what we do.”

The American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy group, said Dorsey’s announcement had created uncertainties and it was being unfairly swept up in Twitter’s efforts to clean up its platform. Affiliates of Planned Parenthood added that they already struggled to get ads approved on social media and worried about a ban.

“Digital advertisement is a cost-effective way for small nonprofits to reach their audience. The question becomes, where do we turn next?” said Emma Corbett, the communications director of Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts, which represents Planned Parenthood in New York State.

Twitter said it held discussions about the policy with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Affairs Council, a nonpartisan organization that advises companies on their lobbying and digital advocacy efforts, last week.

Nick DeSarno, the director of digital and policy communications at the Public Affairs Council, said Twitter was trying to split the difference between limiting politicians from placing ads while allowing advocacy organisations to continue raising awareness about political topics. “While Twitter’s potential new issues ads policy is more permissive than a total ban, it’s still going to be a challenge for groups who are trying to drive political or legislative change using the platform,” he said.

Twitter’s limitations on targeted ads will prevent advertisers from sending political messages to residents of specific ZIP codes or cities; instead, they can broadcast their content only at a state level. The company said it would also prevent advertisers from targeting their messages based on political leanings or interests of users such as “conservative,” “liberal” or “political elections.”

Twitter exempts some 'cause-based' messages from political ad ban

Twitter said Friday its ban on political ads will exempt "caused-based" messages on topics related to social or environmental issues.

The San Francisco-based messaging platform unveiled details of its move to bar all paid political messages, starting November 22, while easing concerns expressed by activists for social causes.

"Ads that educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes are allowed," Twitter said in its new policy.

"However, they may not reference prohibited political advertisers or political content." Twitter announced the political ad ban on October 30, saying the move was aimed at countering the spread of misinformation by politicians.

Chief executive Jack Dorsey said at the time the company wants to head off potential problems from "machine learning-based optimization of messaging and microtargeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes." Under Twitter's new policy, even exempted cause-based ads would face restrictions on how the messages are targeted -- advertisers may use some geographic targeting "at the state, province or regional level and above," but not by specific locality.

These ads could also be targeted by "keyword" searches on the platform or by "interests" previously indicated by users, but may not be based on political leanings or affiliations or other more refined techniques.

The political ban has drawn mixed reactions: some argue it puts pressure on Facebook to follow suit or take other steps to curb the spread of misinformation from politicians; others say a ban will be difficult to enforce.

Social media platforms have been challenged by President Donald Trump's campaign and its use of ads that contain claims critics say have been debunked by independent fact-checkers.

But Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale mocked the ban, saying last month, "Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue, a very dumb decision for their stockholders." Some analysts point out that the ban will not affect "organic" content, or messages from politicians that are shared or retweeted by supporters, and that it could encourage the use of "bots" or paid users to amplify the tweets.

Twitter banning political ads globally from Nov 22, says CEO Jack Dorsey

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Thursday said that the microblogging platform would stop all political advertising globally, becoming the first mainstream social media company to do so.

In a series of tweets, Dorsey explained the reasons for the decision. Saying that internet advertising was “incredibly powerful” and effective for commercial advertisers, it posed “significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions”.

Political ads on social media platforms have been a growing cause for concern globally, especially since reports of foreign interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections surfaced.

“These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility,” said Dorsey.

Dorsey said the company would share the final policy by November 15, and will start enforcing it from November 22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before the change goes into effect.

Among the biggest platforms for political ad spending, companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google have made efforts to bring transparency to the process by releasing political ad spending data globally, including in India’s general elections this year.

“In addition, we need more forward-looking political ad regulation (very difficult to do). Ad transparency requirements are progress, but not enough. The internet provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think past the present day to ensure a level playing field,” Dorsey added.

India has also been struggling to deal with political ad issue in recent times. The government has also, in an ongoing case, been asked to frame rules for social media firms.

Dorsey's tweets found a lot of support on Twitter, and several Twitter users tagged Facebook in replies to Dorsey’s tweets.

Twitter suffers second global service disruption in little over one week

Twitter users on Thursday found themselves unable to log onto the platform as the US social media giant experienced the second service outage in a little over one week.

Twitter has been undergoing some problems since 2:46 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) and more users were alerted with a message saying "something is technically wrong" when they tried to log on, the Xinhua news agency reported.

"IS Twitter down or just mine," asked Twitter user mica@kianscloudy in a tweet, which followed with replies from many users who responded with the same problems.

The service interruption was confirmed on Twitter's status page, which said there was an "active incident" that affected the platform's normal operation.

It was the second time that Twitter reported widespread outages in more than one week after the firm experienced issues with DM delivery and notifications on July 3.

Down Detector, which tracks service interruptions on a variety of sites across the world, posted an increasing number of outage reports since Thursday morning.

Twitter shows more ads than better ideas: Why it needs a better biz model

Twitter is showing its users more ads. That’s a clumsy approach to boosting advertising revenue in an age of sophisticated micro-targeting, and it shows the weakness of Twitter’s business model.

The problem is that Twitter fosters fleeting engagements with its users. Sure, people like to flip quickly through 280-character fragments of #thin content.

But that isn’t necessarily good for advertisers who want to hook users and draw them off-platform. Moreover, unlike the ad behemoths Google and Facebook, Twitter doesn't learn much about its users as they interact with the site.

Like every Internet platform, Twitter knows more about us than we might think. Every page with a “share on Twitter” button uses cookies to let Twitter know what we’re reading — and that alone is enough infer demographics and other information about our interests.

But that’s nothing compared to what Google and Facebook can do with fine-grained data about user interactions. Google learns through Gmail that your cousin just bought a cool tech gadget, and figures you might soon be in the market for one too. Facebook knows that you asked friends for wallet recommendations, and suddenly you’ll start seeing ads for slim microfiber models.

By contrast, Twitter’s superficial messaging and sparse platform design makes inference about users difficult. In many cases, the platform may not even know whether someone you follow is friend or foe (or just amusing).

And Twitter lists are hard to manage, so many people use the “like” option as an all-encompassing bookmark. Meanwhile, Twitter’s subpar direct messaging feature more or less discourages one-on-one interactions.

The last thing Twitter needs is to put more poorly targeted advertising in front of users and clients.

Why not look instead for some other path to advertising success, like LinkedIn’s focus on offering direct messaging opportunities to recruiters and other premium customers?

Even better might be to move beyond an all-ad business model. Twitter could potentially invest in high-quality content like Netflix (although that would take a lot of work, since these days Twitter content seems to be going in the opposite direction). Or perhaps the platform could adopt some sort of concierge service, producing curated information and analytics for corporate clients (although Twitter would have to do this without accidentally leaking user data). The company might even try selling the right to edit tweets.

Whatever the case, Twitter can’t beat the giants at mass data harvesting. Nobody can. And that means it will have to try harder than just scaling up its current ad model.