As it moves to reduce the impacts of its moderation actions, with a view to allowing more kinds of speech to remain on its platform, Twitter has outlined a new set of Tweet-level alerts, which will be added to Tweets that have had their visibility restricted in the app.
Transparency Cranked
As per Twitter, Tweets that violate Twitter’s rules but don’t break them as such, will have these new visibility labels attached, allowing the Tweet creators and readers to know that action has been taken to reduce a Tweet’s impact and reach. Any restriction actions will be taken only at Tweet-level, with Twitter focusing on violations of its Hateful Conduct policy first, before expanding to other policy areas.
Twitter basically admitted to ‘Shadow Banning’, but with upfront explanations, as opposed to the usual, more overt nature of the action – a ‘light’ banning of sorts. This has seemingly become the norm for Twitter 2.0, as the app is now essentially replicating old elements and features and rebranding them as something ‘new’. To be fair, these upfront notifications will provide additional transparency, which will help users understand when their Tweets have been restricted.
That’ll likely lead to more appeals, which Twitter may struggle to handle with 80% less staff, while it’ll also tick off many ‘free speech absolutists’, who disagree with censorship in any form. True enough, shadow banning is one of the cardinal sins that past Twitter management had been accused of, which free speech advocates had hoped would change under Musk. And maybe it has, in some respects, but not clearly. Most of the same rules and restrictions apply, just in a different form.
It also doesn’t address the key issue of harassment and hateful Tweets being targeted at a user. If somebody’s being attacked, and those Tweets are left up, that user is still going to be impacted, even if those Tweets aren’t more generally visible. In such a scenario, the optimal course of action would be removal, but under this new process, that will happen less often, which could lead to all new problems.
The Wrap
In the end, Musk and Co. will be hoping that transparency will be enough, at least in most cases, to reduce their removal actions, which could help appease users, while also keeping ad partners happy. Ads won’t be shown on any Tweet that has been labeled. Even so, it still seems problematic. The true measure really depends on what exactly Twitter decides to leave up, as opposed to removing, and where it draws the line on clear rule violations, those subject to removal, and those at the borderline.
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