Twitter Will Police Hate Speech, Monitor White Supremacists

To police hate speech and white supremacist rhetoric, Twitter has announced that it will concretize its policies, and crack down heavily on those who use the social medium for "hateful imagery and display names," or those who "use [a] username, display name, or profile bio to engage in abusive behavior."

RELATED:
Twitter Bots and Fake Accounts 'Blocking News From Yemen'

"Today, we are starting to enforce these policies across Twitter. In our efforts to be more aggressive here, we may make some mistakes and are working on a robust appeals process. We’ll evaluate and iterate on these changes in the coming days and weeks, and will keep you posted on progress along the way," Twitter said. 

The social media giant will also ban accounts affiliated with groups which "use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes." But the government entities will remain exempt from this policy.

Twitter also suspended Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of far-right group Britain First, whose anti-Muslim videos also shared by Donald Trump last month, came under severe criticism. 

Fransen, in November, posted three unverified anti-Muslim videos, including ones titled "Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!" and "Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!" 

Official Twitter accounts of Britain First, its leader Paul Golding, along with the U.S. white nationalist Jared Taylor and the American Nazi party were also suspended in a major crackdown.

"In our efforts to be more aggressive here, we may make some mistakes and are working on a robust appeals process," Twitter said in a blog post. "We’ll evaluate and iterate on these changes in the coming days and weeks, and will keep you posted on progress along the way." 

Twitter also announced that it will monitor hate speech on and off the platform. 

In the past months, Twitter has removed the verified badges off some of the high-profile white supremacists and alt-right accounts, including banning Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet, one of the service’s most annoying Nazi-adjacent trolls. 

"Accounts using unauthorized badges as part of their profile photos, header photos, display names, or in any way that falsely implies affiliation with Twitter or authorization from Twitter to display these badges, may be suspended," Twitter stated on its website.