New York: Complying with its mission to curb hate speech and abusive language, Twitter is locking the accounts that swear at other people, especially at those who are prominent.
According to a report in Verge on Friday, a Twitter user Victoria Fierce used some harsh words for the US Vice President Mike Pence over the administration's rollback of transgender protections. Soon after her tweet, Fierce received a notification that Twitter had detected "potentially abusive activity" on her account.
Fierce was in temporary timeout and for the next 12 hours, only followers could see her tweets.
"It was just one tweet and certainly not the first time I've told an elected official to f**k off," Fierce was quoted as saying.
Twitter has been claiming that it "prohibits the promotion of hate content, sensitive topics, and violence globally".
According to Twitter, the account lockdown was in line with the changes designed to diminish the reach of abusive accounts.
"Twitter's content filters do not currently distinguish between types of accounts. A single tweet will not trigger its filters, but a 'pattern' of abuse will," the report quoted Twitter spokesperson as saying.
"To their systems, a white supremacist calling for shooting a person of colour is just as bad as an angry Latinx renter telling their city's rent board to f**k off," Fierce added.
The micro-blogging site recebtlty rolled an update that would collapse abusive or low-quality tweets as well as introduce a safer search feature where sensitive content is hidden.
The company also announced that users who are banned permanently cannot return to Twitter.