Yolanda Ruiz: accused on Twitter of what she herself denounced

On February 13, 2022, Colombian journalist Yolanda Ruíz shared on her Twitter account a video in which she read a column published in the newspaper El Espectador: "Perra, diabla, zorra, puta, puta...bala". The title of the text -which was the same as the video- alluded to the way in which insults against women precede femicides, but the platform understood the use of those words as the opposite: a sign of incitement to hatred.

The journalist received an email from Twitter telling her that it was not allowed to threaten, harass or encourage violence against other people on the platform. As happens in these cases, Twitter offered her two options: delete the publication or appeal the sanction. Until he deleted the tweet or a content moderator reviewed the case, his account - with more than 460,000 followers - would remain blocked. Faced with the refusal to remove his own column, which was in no way intended to attack anyone, he filed an appeal.

This was an obvious false positive for hate speech. In attempting to draw attention to certain expressions associated with forms of gender-based discrimination or violence - bitch, whore or slut - Ruiz was penalized as if she was promoting hate speech rather than criticizing it. The Twitter rule contemplates these scenarios by recognizing that some tweets may appear to be hate speech when viewed in isolation, but not when the context of the conversation of which they are a part is taken into account. However, there is no fully defined exception for employing these kinds of insults, for reproving them or for raising awareness of them, as set out in the rules of other platforms.

Two days after filing the appeal, Twitter returned the journalist's account, admitting that "apparently" they had made a mistake. Ruiz took advantage of her return to criticize the measure and the procedures of this social network. She assured that on occasions she had been assaulted with those same insults and others that might sound less offensive, but the platform had not applied its policies. "It is good for us to continue advancing in the collective debate of citizens about this new reality in which private networks have control over an important part of the public debate," she wrote.