Today, Twitter announced an update to how tweets may be shown on your timeline. More specifically, the organization has adopted a new enforcement philosophy known as “Freedom of Speech, not Freedom of Reach,” which is less of a new policy and more of just some additional clarity surrounding an existing one.
As the name suggests, the new philosophy is built around the idea that while users can say whatever they would like on the platform, those tweets can only be shared with a subset of the Twitter ecosystem. This is even though users can say whatever they want on the platform.
The company has stated that it will implement visible filtering when it is necessary to limit the reach of tweets. Twitter already takes that step with tweets that it deems problematic; however, in the past, it has yet to be revealed to the public when it has taken that action.
The general public can no longer see someone’s tweet. If this occurs, Twitter will append a label to the tweet that the public can see. This label will explain to the tweeter and its audience why the message is not being broadcast to the general public. Tweets that have their visibility restricted will be more difficult to find on the site, and Twitter will not post advertisements next to them. However, if you go to a certain person’s timeline, you can read them.
Users can comment if a tweet is assigned a label with which they disagree. This is something that will undoubtedly occur. The label will first be applied to tweets breaking the business’s Hateful Content policy. Still, in the coming months, it will be expanded to apply to tweets that violate other corporate policies.
Twitter states that requesting to remove the label “does not guarantee you will receive a response or that your Tweet’s reach will be restored.” We would only put stock in people reading your request if they acted on it, given the few employees the company is operating with at the moment, so we wouldn’t even count on anyone reading it.
In most cases, this is less of a change in policy and more of an effort to provide openness into something currently occurring in the service. It will be fascinating to find out how ubiquitous the labeling is and the specifics of the appeals process.
