Twitter CEO Hints at Adopting UN’s Declaration of Human Rights for Social Media Platform

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Friday there’s a potential to re-evaluate the company’s values based on the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights — which openly supports free speech.

“Our early values informed our rules. We likely over-rotated on one value, & then let the rules react to rapidly changing circumstances (some we helped create). We need to root these values in human rights law,” Dorsey wrote in a tweet Friday, adding that a “starting consideration” would be the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Whether Dorsey knew it or not, several key rights found in the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights advocate for free speech and freedom of expression without fear of censorship — the antithesis of what Twitter has been under fire for lately.

The second paragraph of the preamble to the Declaration of Human Rights states outright that “freedom of speech and belief” are “proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.”

Article 18 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Additionally, article 19 says: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” – READ MORE

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Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

Dorsey explained Tuesday why Twitter has yet to follow Facebook, Google and Apple’s lead by banning Jones: “he hasn’t violated our rules.”

“If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure, rather than straightforward principles we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction,” Dorsey tweeted. “That’s not us.”

Dorsey’s explanation angered some of his employees, who demanded the CEO do more to regulate speech on the platform. – READ MORE

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