Twitter will begin testing a new feature that sends a notification to users before posting that their tweet replies may be offensive.
In an effort to “clean up” replies and threads on Twitter, anyone who composes a tweet that contains “offensive or hurtful language” will be given a notification that asks them to reconsider their language. Twitter will draw from a bank of reported tweets to see if similar language is used.
When things get heated, you may say things you don't mean. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 5, 2020
In an interview with Reuters, Sunita Saligram, Twitter’s global head of site policy for trust and safety, said that Twitter is “trying to encourage people to rethink their behavior and rethink their language before posting because they often are in the heat of the moment and they might say something they regret.”
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Twitter‘s head of product, Kayvon Beykpour, suggested the move was coming in January of this year, when in a Q&A he revealed the microblogging site was looking into using machine-learning technology to police their platform:
Basically we’re trying to predict the tweets that are likely to violate our rules. And that’s just one form of what people might consider abusive, because something that you might consider abusive may not be against our policies, and that’s where it gets tricky.
The experiment coincides with a wider update to tweet replies, which include “lines and indentations,” breaking up the threads into more cohesive, separate chains.
Your conversations are the 💙 of Twitter, so we’re testing ways to make them easier to read and follow.
Some of you on iOS and web will see a new layout for replies with lines and indentations that make it clearer who is talking to whom and to fit more of the convo in one view. pic.twitter.com/sB2y09fG9t
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 5, 2020
The offensive language warning follows a similar move from Instagram in July of last year. Users who post captions or comments that are “similar to ones that have been reported” are asked to “rethink” their phrasing. In a blog post from December, Facebook said that the results from their experiment “have been promising,” finding that “these types of nudges can encourage people to reconsider their words when given a chance.”
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It is unclear how easy it will be for anyone to bypass the filter, and whether users will instead start using code-words and alternative spellings to get around any restrictions. Twitter is also famously unclear with its rules, often allowing leftists who spout violence to continue using their platform, while deleting accounts and censuring conservatives who don’t subscribe to their political playbook.
