Twitter on Tuesday announced it will begin removing tweets that feature “dehumanizing” language toward religious groups, marking the company’s latest effort to combat the scourge of harassment and bigoted content that has plagued its platform for years.

In a blog post, Twitter announced that it has updated its rules against “hateful conduct,” saying the tweak is the result of extensive conversations with experts and the public.

Twitter offered an array of tweets that would be removed under the new policy, including one that says, “We need to exterminate the rats. The [Religious group] are disgusting.”

Another example reads, “[Religious group] are viruses. They’re making this country sick.”

Twitter has hinted at a potential policy against “dehumanization” for months, saying that framework can help it weed out hateful content that does not necessarily include threats of violence or explicit slurs.

Twitter on Tuesday said that it is planning to expand the dehumanization policy to other marginalized groups at some point but is working to address ongoing questions before that happens. 

The company is looking into how it can distinguish when marginalized groups are using “reclaimed terminology” and how its policy could define groups that are “historically marginalized,” according to the post.

Muslim Advocates, one of the top tech critics focused on online hate, called Twitter’s policy update “a very positive step in the right direction” in a statement on Tuesday.  

Full story at The Hill.