Twitter has announced plans to incorporate a more inclusive language in the organisation by doing away with some popular programming words, which seem offensive to the black community.

The “offensive” terms include;  “master”, “slave” “whitelist” and “blacklist” , which are used in coding.

According to Twitter, which has been very vocal in the #BlackLivesMatter campaign, inclusive language plays a critical role in fostering an environment where everyone belongs.

“At Twitter,  the language we have been using in our code does not reflect our values as a company or represent the people we serve. We want to change that. #WordsMatter ” Twitter said in a tweet posted on it’s engineering handle.

In programming speak, “master” refers to a device or process – such as a hard drive or a database – that controls other devices or processes, which are known as “slaves,” or replicas. “Blacklist” is used to describe items that are automatically denied, typically forbidden websites.

Twitter also shared a list of alternative names the organisation intends to replace the offensive words with. These include allowlist instead of whitelist and denylist instead of blacklist.