So many of you asked how you can help me to get hate-speakers banned from Twitter!

Here's a short How-To Guide on using @TwitterSafety's Terms of Service (ToS) and implementing advanced searches ("twitterdorks") and TweetDeck to help de-platform the baddies.

Thread: https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1203001731593850881
To effectively de-platform hate speakers, you must understand how Twitter's rules and policies work. Twitter won't suspend people for being rude; only for violating their written rules.

Start by reading Twitter's policy on Abusive Behavior. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behavior
Twitter's rules prohibit the following:

- Wishing / hoping serious harm on a person/people
- Unwanted sexual advances
- Aggressive insults meant to of harass / intimidate [rarely enforced IMHO]
- Encouraging or calling for others to harass
- Abusive profiles/names

(cont.)
(cont.) Twitter's rules also prohibit:

- Glorifying suicide or self-harm
- Encouraging suicide or self-harm of others
- Promoting/supporting violent terrorism
- Evading a Twitter ban (creating a new account after being banned)

PS: I wish Twitter had a way to report ban evaders!
In addition to its basic abuse rules, Twitter has policies on Hateful Conduct; these are so crucial for effective de-platforming!

Hate speakers are careful not to directly advocate violence, but they often unwittingly run afoul of Hateful Conduct rules. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy
Twitter's hateful conduct:

- Abuse towards protected class
- Dehumanizing speech
- Deliberate mis-gendering or deadnaming
- Using hateful imagery to harass:
= noose
= swastika
= altering images of people to add animalistic features
= altering images to add a yellow Star of David
Twitter forbids slurs, degrading generalizations, etc. towards these protected categories:¹

race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

¹ Victim doesn't have to be member of the category!
Twitter's Dehumanizing Speech policy¹ is a great way to get hate speakers suspended.

It forbids language treating members of any religion to
animals, infestations, viruses, garbage, trash, etc.

¹ - This policy is supported by solid historical research!
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/hatefulconductupdate.html
Now that you understand Twitter's policies, you can not only respond effectively to targeted abuse.

You can go hunting for nazis! It's a fun hobby in your spare time, and it helps keep everyone safe

Twitter's advanced search function is a great way to get started. Let's go!
Hackers often use advanced Google searches for specific strings (known as "googledorks") to search for vulnerable websites.

Likewise, we can use "twitterdorks" to search for tweets which are likely to be violations of Twitter's policies, and report them. https://buffer.com/library/twitter-advanced-search
Few people realize the power of Twitter's advanced search! It supports:

- Boolean
- Logical grouping: (a OR b) AND (c OR d)
- Negatives: bullet -dodged -train
- Quoted phrases: "string her up"
- from:CNN finds tweets and replies by @CNN
- to:CNN finds replies *to* @CNN

(cont.)
Twitter's advanced search also supports:

- filter:verified finds tweets by verified (blue check) accounts
- min_faves:5 finds tweets with at least 5 likes
- min_retweets:3 finds tweets with at least 3 retweets
- @CNN finds tweets mentioning CNN
- #brexit finds hashtagged tweets
Another useful Twitter search filter is "list:". If you have a private Twitter list called "Abusers"

list:yourname/Abusers

will filter your search to only the tweets by accounts who are members of the Abusers list. Replace "yourname" with your profile name: "list:chadloder/Foo"
Other notes on Advanced Search:

AND and OR need to be all caps

Twitter does word-stemming automatically.
Searching for "change" might return results for "changed", etc. Experiment with it.

Use "Latest Tweets" in results.

You can save searches!

You can share search URLs!
Here's how to report abusive tweets to Twitter.

REVIEW EACH TWEET CAREFULLY before reporting it.

Put emotions aside. Think like a lawyer. Does the tweet CLEARLY violate a written rule?

Overloading @TwitterSafety with false positives hurts the cause, and might get you flagged.
No matter how clever your advanced queries are, the results will always include many tweets that don't break the rules.

For example, tweets which talk ABOUT abuse are not abuse!

Before reporting a tweet, take your time to understand it within the context of its full thread.
Some more tips on reporting abusive tweets.

- You can report someone's profile if it the profile itself contains hateful imagery or abusive language.

- Twitter can take weeks to review and respond to reports.

- The more people who report a tweet, the higher priority it gets!
[cw: slurs from here on!☠️]
Now that we've covered finding & reporting abusive tweets, let's go hunting!

Remember Twitter's rules on dehumanizing speech towards a religion?

We can use the Boolean OR operator. Click on this link and select "Latest Tweets"
https://twitter.com/search?q=%20%20%20%22muslim%20pig%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20swine%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20cockroach%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20plague%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20bitch%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20filth%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20snake%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20serpent%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20demon%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20infestation%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20vermin%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20trash%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20garbage%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20scum%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20maggot%22%20OR%20%22muslim%20parasite%22&src=typed_query&f=live
[cw: slurs from here on!☠️]
Let's find tweets which *might* threaten violence. Use:

"string her up" OR "string her ass up" OR "from the highest tree" OR "from the nearest tree" OR "string that bitch up" OR "string the bitch up"-threaten -myself -chadloder https://twitter.com/search?q=%22string%20her%20up%22%20OR%20%22string%20her%20ass%20up%22%20OR%20%22from%20the%20highest%20tree%22%20OR%20%22from%20the%20nearest%20tree%22%20OR%20%22string%20that%20bitch%20up%22%20OR%20%22string%20the%20bitch%20up%22-chadloder%20-myself&src=typed_query&f=live
[cw: slurs from here on!☠️]

Advanced search can be used for #OSINT. For example, build private Lists of people who use Nazi dogwhistles.

Here's one!

("14 minutes" OR "14 hours" OR "14 days" OR "14 dollars") AND ("88 seconds" OR "88 hours" OR "88 cents") https://twitter.com/search?q=(%2214%20minutes%22%20OR%20%2214%20hours%22%20OR%20%2214%20days%22%20OR%20%2214%20dollars%22)%20AND%20(%2288%20seconds%22%20OR%20%2288%20hours%22%20OR%20%2288%20cents%22)&src=typed_query&f=live
Here's a little-known secret: Twitter has a separate web form you can use to report abusive tweets.

It's more cumbersome, but it allows you to submit more context for review, and provides you with a ticket number via email.

I use it when I want followup. https://help.twitter.com/forms/abusiveuser
When Twitter takes action, they may do the following:

- Remove the offending tweet

- Put the offender in "twitter jail" (a temporary read-only mode) for hours or days

- Permanently suspend repeat offenders.

So, have patience. Offenders often re-offend - they can't help it!
If you want to make a habit of hunting for hate speech on Twitter, you can use Twitter's built-in @TweetDeck app to set up your favorite "twitterdorks" queries as live columns.

Just go to https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/  and get started!
When you're searching for hate speech on Twitter, you may want to adjust your settings to show the accounts you've blocked and muted.

Click on the three dots (...) to the right of the search bar and select "Search Settings".

Un-check "Remove blocked and muted accounts"
Some helpful suggestions on how to use your new Twitter knowledge:

Protect your friends. If you have a friend (or a stan) who gets lots of abusive replies:

DON'T: argue with trolls in your friend's mentions.

DO: search for "from:TheTroll <racist stuff>" and get them suspended.
Reporting hate speech feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Let me tell you why it makes a difference.

If an account keeps violating the rules, Twitter WILL suspend them.

Sure, they can create a new account. But they've lost time, and they've lost ALL their followers.
When an abusive account with lots of followers gets suspended, it impacts hate speech networks.

These networks always rely on popular accounts to serve as connectors and amplifiers.

Banning them reduces their ability to fundraise and communicate. It forces them to waste time.
If you want to get really advanced with this stuff, you can experiment with searching for different racist slurs. See what you come up with.

Believe it or not, there's an open source website called the Racial Slur Database and it's been online since 1999! http://www.rsdb.org/races 
A fun strategy for dealing my own trolls. I don't even reply to them. I just search their tweets, narc them out to Twitter, and get them suspended.

Let's take this @/ShuttleDiscover character who just trolled me.

Guess what's in his post history? Guess who's getting suspended!
🎗Important mental health reminder🎗

This stuff gets REALLY dark. Once you start searching for hate speech, you go down a rabbit hole where you find truly horrendous stuff (pictures and videos are the worst).

There's nothing wrong with just blocking. https://twitter.com/EbThen/status/1205653958712315904?s=20
I’m going to finish the thread here.

Follow me ➡️ @chadloder ⬅️

I’ll be posting updates, including an analysis of Twitter’s new rules which go into effect Jan 1st 2020).

While you’re at it, follow @RVAwonk and @nickmartin, and @jaredlholt. They do good work.
em português https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1216108432492654592?s=20
In Finnish (Suomen kielellä) https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1214478309553135617?s=20
You can follow @chadloder.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

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