New Delhi (India), 19th April 2023: A new “visibility” policy for tweets was announced by Twitter on Monday. The policy will affect tweets that are thought to potentially violate the platform’s regulations. The business underlined that it prioritises freedom of speech but not necessarily “reach,” thus tweets that break the rules can still be available on the platform but with restricted exposure.
According to the platform, its new “visibility filtering” policy will go beyond the conventional “leave up versus take down” approach to content regulation. Twitter will also introduce “publicly visible labels” in order to restrict the reach of such content.
The firm stated via tweet from handle, Twitter Safety, “We also believe it is our responsibility to keep users on our platform safe from content violating our rules. These beliefs are the foundation of freedom of speech, not freedom of reach — our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable.”
Twitter also published some sample screenshots to show how a tweet’s visibility is limited if it would violate the site’s policy against hate speech.
With the help of the new policy’s functionality, both the platform’s users and the tweet’s author will have more information about potential policy violations. This action is anticipated to improve the company’s accountability and transparency for content moderation enforcement.
Users can also comment on the label if they feel that Twitter has incorrectly limited their tweet’s visibility. Right now, leaving feedback does not ensure that the user will hear back or that their Tweet’s reach will be increased.
Twitter added that they are attempting to make it possible for authors to challenge the restrictions imposed on their content.
