Twitter’s Discretion in Its Terms of Service and the Way We Define Words

If you’re a person who spends time on Twitter, you might be aware that it’s been a manic week on the platform (although every week is a manic week on Twitter; it’s 2017). As the news broke about Harvey Weinstein’s pattern of multiple sexual assaults, Rose McGowan added to the many allegations and tweeted an accusation of rape against him. Later, McGowan’s Twitter account was suspended. The reaction to this suspension was swift and furious by many of the platform’s users. Twitter later clarified that it suspended her account because she had posted a personal phone number (in violation of Twitter’s policies) but for a while the exact reason was unclear, and many users complained that it was more of Twitter’s selective enforcement of its policies.

I’m about to settle in to teach contract ambiguity and rules of interpretation, and looking through Twitter’s policies I’m reminded of how important it is that we keep our human biases in mind when defining words. Twitter’s policies–which we all agree to through Twitter’s Terms of Use–give the company a lot of discretion in how the policies get applied: “We may suspend an account if it has been reported to us as violating our Rules surrounding abuse” (emphasis added); “Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include . . . .” (emphasis added); “Keep in mind that although you may consider certain information to be private, not all postings of such information may be a violation of this policy. . . . We may consider the context and nature of the information posted, local privacy laws, and other case-specific facts when determining if this policy has been violated” (emphasis added). Aside from the discretion, though, is the issue of how words like “harassment” and “abusive behavior” are even getting defined. It’s clear from the very public debates that have been erupting recently that there is a different view of that depending on which gender, race, and ethnic identity you ask. To take just one example, the discussion around telling women to smile indicates that many women find this harassing while many men don’t see what the big deal is. Twitter might be deliberately selectively applying its policies but it also might just be defining its policies in a way that leads to selective enforcement because of the particular worldview of the people making the decisions. This means, dangerously, that they might sincerely believe they’re applying rules neutrally, without recognizing any built-in bias. 

Social media’s increasing reliance on algorithms to handle the speech going on on the sites has lots of problems, and as more and more public discourse collides up against more and more opaque policies, it seems like a problem that’s only going to get worse. We should think about these issues, and we should especially think about them as we teach our students how to interpret the contracts that govern our lives: we all have an entrenched viewpoint that should be critically examined rather than blithely assume our own neutrality. 

In the meantime, I’m going to post this blog and then tweet to tell you all about it, because that’s the way we communicate in today’s society, and I’m going to have to agree to Twitter’s policies to do it, and I’m going to hope these policies let me make the tweet, something that many of us take for granted but that is definitely not guaranteed. Our contracts are never as clear as we hope.