Welcome back to What’s Up Twitter!  This past week’s Twitter updates exemplify how much care and concern the company has for people all over the world under the new direction of Elon Musk. Highlights from this week include:

• Twitter officially launches their violent speech policy
• Community Notes expands to Brazil and other improvements
• Future plans: video, suppressed tweets, feedback for BasedAi

On March 1, Elon Musk explained (in a tweet), 

“The ability of Twitter advertising to reach the most influential people in the world is often not fully appreciated.

While a few other social networks are technically bigger, Twitter is where the writers & leaders spend their time” – Elon Musk

I think one reason writers & leaders spend their time on Twitter is that no other social network gives the ability for people to reach out to others so easily.  The person you want to communicate with can choose to read your input.  The opportunity is there and it is unlike anything else.

TWITTER COMMUNITY NOTES FOR BRAZIL

As of March 2, Briazilians can apply to contribute to Community Notes. Twitter announced,

“Hello Brazil! Starting today, we will accept contributors from Brazil to Notas da Comunidade. Want to help? Subscribe now! Vacancies will be opened gradually so we can keep an eye on the quality of the experience. We look forward to learning from you!

Help keep people on Twitter in the loop.

Community Notes is now available in your country. Participate to add useful context to potentially misleading Tweets.  Subscribe to Community Notes.” – Twitter

I am thrilled to see Twitter open up Notas da Comunidade for Brazil! This was specifically mentioned by Elon Musk at the World Government Summit on February 15. The purpose of Community Notes was explained by Elon Musk,

“I think there’s something that we’re putting a lot of efforts into called Community Notes. It’s currently just in English, but we will be expanding it to all languages. 

That is I think quite a good way to assess the truth of things where it’s the community itself basically the people of Earth who are basically, not exactly voting but competing to provide the most accurate information. 

So it’s sort of a competition for truth. I think it’s a very powerful concept to have a competition for truth, because you also said, like what is truth, it’s because what may be true to self, may not be viewed as true to others, but you want to have the closest approximation of that so I think the Community Notes thing is very powerful.” – Elon Musk

TWITTER OFFICIALLY LAUNCHES THEIR VIOLENT SPEECH POLICY

Here’s the Twitter thread on February 28th which summarizes the policy:

“We’ve made a few changes to our policies around violent content and similar language. 
Today, we’ve officially launched our Violent Speech policy, which prohibits violent threats, wishes of harm, glorification of violence, and incitement of violence.  
Twitter has a zero-tolerance approach towards Violent Speech, and in most cases, we will suspend any account violating this policy. 
For less severe violations, we may require you to delete the content before you can access your account again.  
If you believe a tweet violates this policy, please report it to us right away. 
As always, if you think we made a mistake, you can file an appeal by following the process here: Appeal a locked or suspended account."

Twitter’s straightforward policy on violent threats (taken from their official website) states,

“You may not threaten to inflict physical harm on others, which includes (but is not limited to) threatening to kill, torture, sexually assault, or otherwise hurt someone. This also includes threatening to damage civilian homes and shelters, or infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities.”  

Twitter explains Wishes of Harm “You may not wish, hope, or express desire for harm. This includes (but is not limited to) hoping for others to die, suffer illnesses, tragic incidents, or experience other physically harmful consequences.” 

For Incitement of Violence, Twitter states, “You may not incite, promote, or encourage others to commit acts of violence or harm, which includes (but is not limited to) encouraging others to hurt themselves or inciting others to commit atrocity crimes including crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocide. This also includes using coded language (often referred to as “dog whistles”) to indirectly incite violence.”

Lastly, Twitter details Glorification of Violence, “You may not glorify, praise, or celebrate acts of violence where harm occurred, which includes (but is not limited to) expressing gratitude that someone experienced physical harm or praising Violent entities and Perpetrators of Violent Attacks. This also includes glorifying animal abuse or cruelty.”

Twitter’s easy-to-understand Violent Speech Policy also includes short explanations of “What is not a violation of this policy?” and “What happens if you violate this policy?” 

This is Twitter’s overview, which you may find valuable, 

“Twitter is a place where people can express themselves, learn about what’s happening, and debate global issues.

However, healthy conversations can’t thrive when violent speech is used to deliver a message.

As a result, we have a zero tolerance policy towards violent speech in order to ensure the safety of our users and prevent the normalization of violent actions.” Twitter

COMMUNITY NOTES: MORE IMPROVEMENTS

I’ve written about Community Notes often, and Twitter is continuously improving in this area. 

This week an update was shared, stating, “Major under-the-hood update: Community Notes can now run multiple note ranking models in parallel, facilitating both expansion to new countries and experimentation with improved ranking approaches. As always, the code and data is open source: GitHub Ranking Notes.” 

Twitter explains, “We’re now running three models: our existing core model, an experimental variant of the core model that could potentially increase note coverage, and a model that will help assess and improve quality as Community Notes expands to new countries and languages in the coming weeks.” 

If you’re not familiar with Community Notes, you can read more here. 

FUTURE PLANS: VIDEO, SUPRESSED TWEETS, FEEDBACK FOR BasedAI

Elon Musk is known for thoughtfully taking user’s suggestions into consideration. 

On February 28, Elon liked this suggestion from Steven Mark Ryan, Tesla YouTube personality, “Twitter desperately needs 1.5x, 2x etc video playback speed. I have taken to downloading videos from twitter via a third party app to watch them at 2x on my computer. Would also be cool to have an AI trim out silences automatically & give us a button to toggle that mode on/off.” 

Always caring about people and quick to fix problems, Elon Musk confirmed Twitter is looking into concerns by Zuby Music, a well-known rapper with 1M followers and others.  They communicated on February 28 that “Many of my followers aren’t seeing my tweets anymore and others are experiencing the same.” 

T(w)itter Daily News translated a comment by Guillaume Verdon, a software engineer that Elon replied to.  “IMO Elon Musk most likely to use Twitter for data + RLHF & Tesla Dojo supercomputer for training/inference of LLMs at BasedAI. It’s all coming together.”  This statement and Elon’s positive response strongly suggest that Twitter data will be included in building a new improved ChatGPT. Let’s break this down.  

Elon Musk, noticing that OpenAI’s ChatGPT has recently shown deep problems which do not seem to be improving, is seeking to create a new organization, “BasedAI” which will draw from several areas for success:

• Twitter data
• (RLHF) reinforcement learning with human feedback (Learn more at, Introduction to Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback)
• Tesla Dojo supercomputer for training/inference of Large Language Models (Learn more about LLMs here) 

CONCLUSION

Twitter functions as an incredible tool because of its reach to the most influential people in the world. Now, with the launch of their Violent Speech Policy and the expansion of Community Notes to Brazil, they can help create even more meaningful, uplifting conversations and media topics geared towards all communities around the world.

Elon Musk is known for taking users’ suggestions into consideration, so don’t be afraid to post your thoughts and opinions, it might just have some influence on Twitter’s future features. In summary, whether you use Twitter for entertainment or business purposes, remember that Twitter seeks to spread positivity and inclusion to everyone who is part of its community.

I love it when I see people across various communities interacting and engaging in conversations with understanding and respect for one another. Use Twitter more often, try out Community Notes and believe that Elon Musk really cares to hear our thoughts – these are some small steps we can take each day on building a better social media universe.

^{Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Twitter – February 23, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Twitter 2.0 and Elon Musk in both making lives better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.}