Twitter's new hate and violence policies go into effect November 22nd

Just a couple of weeks ago, Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey responded to the #WomenBoycotTwitter movement on his company's microblogging platform with a promise to help Twitter "take a more aggressive stance" toward hate speech and sexual harassment. A few days after that, an internal email showed that the company was taking the promises seriously and widening its crackdown on violent groups and abusive content. The company just tweeted that its new policies will launch on November 22nd.

The company began its recent process with a calendar of updates to their policies against sexual harassment, hate groups, and violent images. The policy changes include an expanded definition of non-consensual nudity to include content where the victim may not even be aware of the images taken, as with hidden webcams. Hateful imagery will no longer be permitted in avatars or profile headers.

Twitter also posted a blog post to help explain why it's taking so long to create the policies themselves. In addition, the company posted new policies prohibiting the posting of private information, the definition of which may vary based on local laws. Twitter attempts to define private as credit card information, social security or other national ID numbers, private home addresses and non-public personal phone numbers and email addresses. It also defines non-private information as your name, birthdate or age, business address, where you go to school or work, and descriptions of your appearance.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey summed up his company's recent work in this arena in a tweet, as well, with a link to the privacy policies mentioned above. "More clarity on our private information policy and enforcement. Working to build as much direct context into the product too."