Twitter will label tweets that are downgraded for violating its hate speech policy

Twitter today announced a new policy that it says will provide more transparency regarding hateful tweets on its platform that have been subject to enforcement action. Typically, when tweets violate Twitter's policies, one of the steps the company can take is to limit the reach of those tweets — or something it calls "visibility filtering." In these scenarios, the tweets remain online but become less visible because they are excluded from areas such as search results, trends, recommended notifications, For You and Next times, and more.

Instead, if users want to see the tweet, they should visit the author's profile directly.

The tweet may also be downgraded in replies when such an application takes place and ads will not be shown against the content, per Twitter guidelines.

Historically, the general public did not necessarily know if a tweet had been moderated in this way. Now Twitter says that will change.

The company plans to "soon" begin adding visible tags to tweets that have been identified as potentially violating its policies, which has impacted their visibility. He did not specify when exactly the system would be fully deployed on his network.

Image credits: Twitter

In addition, any tweets that have been downgraded will not be tagged, the company noted.

It only starts with tweets that violate its hateful conduct policy and indicates that it will expand the feature to other policy areas in the "coming months".

“This change is designed to result in more proportional and transparent enforcement actions for everyone on our platform,” said a blog post by “Twitter Safety.” The post also touted Twitter's enforcement philosophy, calling it "freedom of speech, not freedom of access".

If a tweet is tagged, the user themselves will not be banned or removed from the network - the company notes that policy actions will occur "at the tweet level only and will not affect an individual's account. user".

Twitter also explains that users whose tweets have been tagged will be able to submit comments if they think their tweet was misflagged, but says they may not receive a response to those comments, and that nor will it guarantee that the reach of the tweet will be restored.

This is likely related to the vast cuts Twitter has made to its Trust & Safety teams and the company as a whole. And it may rely heavily on automation to make its labeling decisions, though it's unclear how much that system will be automated. (Twitter no longer responds to press inquiries, so blog posts and tweets from the company or its new owner, Elon Musk, are the only official word on things like this.) Automation, of course , could mean Twitter will get it wrong - something it admits in a Twitter thread about the changes. Here, the company also says it plans to allow authors to appeal its decision at some point "in the future".

Again, no hard or approximate time frame was provided.

The launch of the new policy follows Twitter's earlier decisions under Musk to allow controversial figures, including Trump and neo-Nazis, to join the network. In one incident, Musk took the artist formerly known as Kanye West back to Twitter, who then tweeted a swastika and was suspended.

The new policy announced today may reflect Twitter's attempt to balance two opposing forces. On the one hand, Musk is a proponent of free speech who spoke out against Twitter's allegedly untransparent moderation policies in the years before it took over the company. He even went so far as to publicly share d...