OPINION:
It has now been two years since I was suspended from Twitter. Since then, a sitting president of the United States was de-platformed, numerous users have been locked out of their accounts for stating biological facts, and now the richest man in the world has taken nearly a 10% stake in the company and is even trying to buy it completely in an effort to return it to a free speech platform. Personally, I believe Twitter is beyond saving, but if there’s one person who is in the position to improve the platform, it’s Elon Musk. Here are three policy changes he should push for to make that happen.
1. Allow permanently suspended users to return to the platform and improve the appeals process.
The natural first step in restoring Twitter to a free speech platform is to restore the accounts of users who were wrongfully removed from the platform, and yes, this includes the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump. Hundreds of thousands of users have been unfairly de-platformed with no current way to return to the platform. Previously suspended users should receive an email to file a support ticket to begin the process of rejoining the platform. Once the ticket is filed, the user should be allowed back on within seven days.
The only individuals who should remain suspended and should be permanently suspended in the future are those who used Twitter to violate the law. The appeals process must also be improved so that Twitter employees are required to follow up with users rather than just sending them an automated email or no email at all.
2. Reform the penalties and enforcement actions for policy violations.
The next step should be to prevent this from happening again by changing Twitter’s rules and the enforcement actions that are taken against users so that they cannot be weaponized. Currently, Twitter has the ability to permanently ban users for any reason or for no reason at all. While Twitter’s specific policies on what constitutes a violation are also problematic and should also be addressed, reforming the enforcement actions would be a more immediate and effective step.
In an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Twitter’s policy and trust lead, Vijaya Gadde, said: “It’s a very rare occasion where we will outright suspend someone without any sort of warning or any sort of ability to understand what happened.” We all know that is not the case. Permanent suspensions should be rare and only be reserved for the most severe violations, like illegal behavior or impersonation. Someone who Tweets an edgy meme or joke (like myself) should not receive the same punishment as someone who posts a death threat.
My suggestion for a policy change would be to completely eliminate permanent suspensions for any offenses that don’t involve violation of the law, or impersonation of other users.
For all other nonserious offenses, a “timeout” based penalty that increases with each infraction within a specified period of time is sufficient. For example, 12 hours for a first offense, three days for a second, seven days for a third, one month for a fourth and so on. After the “timeout” is served the offense should stay on the user’s account as a strike for 90 days at which point it would be removed. This would be an easy way to prevent bad actors from using an account to repeatedly violate rules intentionally while at the same time not unfairly punishing regular users.
Twitter should also be required to identify the violating piece of content and what rule was violated in each case.
3. Turn the focus of policy to empower the user to control their own experience on the platform.
The problem with Twitter’s policies is that they are written in a way that makes it seem as though the company is responsible for every piece of content on their site when, in fact, that’s what separates a platform from a publisher. So instead of encouraging users to report posts that simply offend them, Twitter should empower users to curate their experience to see what they want to see and to hide what they don’t. Grown adults do not need “Fact Checkers” or speech police to hide content they deem to be controversial. It’s not the way the world works, and it’s an unrealistic expectation for a social media platform with millions of users on it.
Twitter already has a number of features that help users control what they see such as blocking, the ability to mute certain words and users and more, but the issue is that they don’t encourage users to use them as much as they emphasize reporting offensive content. Users should also be given the option to have a chronological or curated timeline. Giving users more control of features will lead to a better overall experience for everyone on the platform.
These three suggestions will not completely save Twitter, but they would significantly improve the direction of the platform. While Elon has Tweeted polls about suggestions for new features and changes, we all know he didn’t spend billions just to lobby for an edit button. If he truly wants more free speech on Twitter, let’s see more demands and actions to prove it.
• Alex J. Lorusso (ALX) is a political strategist who was banned from Twitter two years ago, for perhaps posting a meme about President Biden being compromised by China, although his suspension remains unclear.
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