Twitter to Label the 'Hateful' Tweets It's Limiting (But Not Removing)

pcmag.com:

Twitter will add labels to any tweets that it shadowbans for breaking company rules.

Twitter first promised to be more transparent about how it shadowbans accounts and content in December. That effort is now rolling out on posts that violate Twitter's Hateful Conduct policy before rolling out to other policy areas "in the coming months," the company says(Opens in a new window).

It doesn't actually use the word shadowban, though, calling the effort "visibility filtering."

"Restricting the reach of tweets, also known as visibility filtering, is one of our existing enforcement actions that allows us to move beyond the binary 'leave up versus take down' approach to content moderation," Twitter says. "However, like other social platforms, we have not historically been transparent when we've taken this action."

Tweets with "limited visibility" will have reduced reach, ensuring fewer people see their content—even via search or recommendations. Ads will also not be placed near marked tweets.

That includes messages directly attacking people on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, etc.; Twitter also defines hateful conduct(Opens in a new window) as racist or sexist slurs, tropes, and intimidation, as well as hateful references, imagery, and incitement.

"These labels bring a new level of transparency to enforcement actions by displaying which policy the tweet potentially violates to both the tweet author and other users on Twitter," the company says. "Tweets with these labels will be made less discoverable on the platform."

Accounts posting them, however, will not be penalized in any way.

Users can submit feedback on the label if they think it's incorrectly