Twitter to label tweets that get downranked for violating its hate speech policy

Twitter announced a new policy that it claims will offer more transparency around which hateful tweets on its platform have been subject to enforcement action. Typically, when tweets violate Twitter’s policies, one of the actions 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 discoverable, as they’re excluded from areas like search results, trends, recommended notifications, For You and Following timelines, and more.

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

The tweet may also be downranked in replies when such enforcement takes place and ads won’t run against the content, Twitter’s guidelines state.

Historically, the wider public would 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 labels on tweets that have been identified as potentially violating its policies, which has impacted their visibility. It did not say when exactly the system would be fully rolled out across its network.