Twitter policy takes aim at coronavirus discrimination

Twitter's ongoing quest to make everyone behave better online has a new target.

The social media giant has made an update that prohibits the use of dehumanizing language toward people on the basis of age, disability, or disease. Dehumanizing language is speech that compares or treats others as less than human. For example, comparing a member of one of Twitter's (newly expanded) protected groups to animals or vermin is textbook dehumanization.

Twitter says the change has been in the works for a while, but that the latter category is particularly timelyAnimosity and racism against people who have contracted novel coronavirus has been rising. So now, on Twitter at least, fearful people can't deploy dehumanizing hate toward people who happen to have contracted a scary illness. Read more...