Twitter has taken several major steps in the past few months to fix its abuse problem and establish its reputation as a responsible platform where hatred, bigotry, and sexism can’t thrive. It’s now going to extend the same focus to posts encouraging self-harm as well. The microblogging service has confirmed today that it will now start responding to reports of users encourage others to harm themselves.
It’s about time that Twitter started paying attention to this because for far too long, the phrase “kill yourself” has been a long-running humorous and sarcastic pattern on the service. Now that it’s properly enforcing this policy it should, hopefully, result in prompt removal of content that encourages others to do self-harm.
Twitter reminded users today that while it will continue to provide resources to people who might be having thoughts of self-harm, it’s against rules to encourage other users on Twitter to harm themselves. That’s why starting today, users can report a profile, tweet or Direct Message for content that encourages others to harm themselves.
Twitter does have a list of its mental health partners on its website and it encourages users to use it if they or someone they know is considering suicide or self-harm. It will review the reported posts and then decide whether or not they should be taken down if they really are against the rules.