Twitter: Users will soon be able to appeal for account suspension

Twitter said on Friday that its users will be able to appeal account suspensions from 1st February 2023.

In November 2022, Elon Musk asked,” Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?”, through his Twitter handle.

Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

He tweeted, “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.” in his another tweet.

The people have spoken.

Amnesty begins next week.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

Accounts of tech journalists like Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Ryan Mac of the New York Times, and Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, were suspended for allegedly breaking the organization’s new location-sharing policy. The accounts were later restored by Twitter.

Later, Twitter updated its policy, “We’ve updated our private information policy to prohibit sharing someone else’s live location in most cases,” Twitter Safety wrote.

Elon Musk Warned Twitter users against doxxing of live locations, Calling it a ‘physical Safety Violation’.

Twitter’s new criteria for account suspensions

According to the company’s new criteria, Twitter accounts will only be suspended for severe or ongoing and repeat violations of the platform’s policies.

Severe policy violations include engaging in illegal content or activity, inciting or threatening violence or harm, and engaging in targeted harassment of other users, among others.

Twitter said that going forward, it will take less severe action, in comparison to account suspension, such as limiting the reach of tweets that violate its policies or asking users to remove tweets before continuing to use the account.

Elon Musk announced some of the improvements coming to microblogging, including bookmarking. Twitter already has a function where you can bookmark a tweet. However, since unveiling the yearly Twitter Blue membership plans, the microblogging platform has been adjusting where the bookmarking choices are located on both the Android and iOS versions of the Twitter app.

Also read: Elon Musk: Twitter plans to roll out zero ads subscription model