Twitter’s haphazard purge

Neo-Nazis are no longer welcome on Twitter — or, at least, some are not. That is the murky message the social media platform has so far sent in enforcing its new rules to reduce hateful and abusive content. Twitter announced the policy change in November and started suspending violators this month. Executives are right that their hands-off approach to harassment was not working, but the public outcry from both sides so far is a sign that the alternative will pose problems of its own.

Twitter’s new policies are a welcome answer to charges that the company provided a public platform to white supremacists leading up to this summer’s deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va. The rules prohibit “accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence against civilians” both online and off as well as “content that glorifies violence or the perpetrators of a violent act.” Pre-existing restrictions on “behavior that harasses, intimidates or uses fear to silence another person’s voice” have been expanded to include hateful imagery.

This specificity marks a significant change from earlier this year, when the site’s slapdash method of tackling complaints, as recent reporting by BuzzFeed has revealed, suggested that few inside the company understood their own policies. The current status quo is a step forward. But the rules are still subjective, and that subjectivity opens the door to treading on free speech.

Twitter deserves credit for recognizing its role as a publisher and not just a platform. But as the site steps toward maturity, its leadership also must recognize that Twitter’s unusually powerful position in society comes with the responsibility of protecting and promoting the values that made its success possible in the first place.