Freedom of speech not 'freedom of reach', Twitter to restrict visibility

Social media platform Twitter will allow freedom of speech but not "freedom of reach" as it will restrict visibility of tweets that violate its rules, the company said in its policy update.

Twitter will initially apply the visibility filter on tweets that are found violating hateful conduct rules and expand it to other domains later.

The social media firm said that Twitter users have the right to express their opinions and ideas without fear of censorship.

"We also believe it is our responsibility to keep users on our platform safe from content violating our rules. These beliefs are the foundation of freedom of speech, not freedom of reach -- our enforcement philosophy which means, where appropriate, restricting the reach of tweets that violate our policies by making the content less discoverable," the firm said.

 

The sample screenshot shared an example of visibility restriction of tweets that may violate Twitter's rule against hateful conduct.

"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. However, like other social platforms, we have not historically been transparent when we've taken this action," it said.

The social media firm said that it will not place ads adjacent to content that is labelled under the new rule.

"Starting soon, we will add publicly visible labels to tweets identified as potentially violating our policies letting you know we've limited their visibility," the microblogging platform said.

Twitter said that authors will be able to submit feedback on the label, if they think "we incorrectly limited their tweet's visibility.

"Currently, submitting feedback does not guarantee you will receive a response or that your tweet's reach will be restored. We are working on allowing authors to appeal our decision," it said.