New Twitter and Facebook policy changes

Twitter announced changes Tuesday in its policy on Internet trolls, but no one is quite sure what the rules will mean in the long run. Facebook made several changes in the way their News Feed formula works. Amanda Hess [no relation] over at Slate noted that the new rules for Twitter, in the effort to fight pernicious trolls, may already need more tweaks to better resemble user's familiar spam filters.

This, according to Hess, came from Caroline Sinders yesterday in a tweet as suggestions rolled in on Twitter, that users can visit periodically to view filtered tweets like the common email spam box, and undelete those that mistakenly get culled by Twitter's new rules. Hess also observed that Twitter execs don't seem to use the service to tweet about abuse of the system, and in one case CEO Dick Costolo took questions last year online but did not address any tweets about Twitter abuse.

On Tuesday, Shreyas Doshi, Twitter Director of Product Management, expressed in a company blog post that free speech is a value for Twitters users but that there had been two changes in policy. One having to do with prohibited content and the manner in which they will deal with particular violations of rules.

The rules on prohibited content, which includes violent abuse by trolls, have been tightened to include, according to Doshi, "threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others." He wrote that it broadens previous language and in addition that enforcement would be tightened as well. Now, the enforcement policy has been tightened where an account can be "lock abusive accounts for specific periods of time."

Facebook changes

Also Tuesday, Max Eulenstein, product manager for Facebook, said in a blog post that there will be three changes in the way a user's news feed will operate. The first change is related more to those who don't have much content in their news feed in the first place, and providing further content for those who wish it. The second change is the one most in the news, that the algorithm has been changed to include more personal content from friends that you care about with a caveat.

Perhaps the real change is that there will be less of a focus on whether a friend "likes" or comments on a story somewhere. In the company post, both from Mr. Eulenstein and User Experience Researcher, Lauren Scissors said that the "update will make these stories appear lower down in News Feed or not at all."