Twitter has released a new notification for tweets that belong to public figures (politicians, celebrities and so on) that go against the community guidelines that the company has set. As of now, if an important personality like the president of the United States, Donald Trump were to tweet anything that goes against the rules of Twitter, the social network will let everyone who uses it know about the infringement and by so doing reduce the length the tweet will go, in order words, prevent a lot of people from seeing it. Following current interviews of the executives of Twitter, our sources believe that this would soon be implemented.
The notification will only affect those tweets that come from accounts of politicians, verified users, and accounts of people who have more than a hundred thousand followers. If a tweet has been identified to have gone against the rules of the platform, a team of people within the company will be the ones to decide if it is a matter that should gain the interest of the public, if that becomes the case, a light gray box will appear before the tweet to let users know that it is an infringement, although users who click through the box will still see it. This means that the tweet will be kept however, it will not get to new audience via Twitter.
The Twitter safety team wrote in a blog post: “In the past, we’ve allowed certain Tweets that violated our rules to remain on Twitter because they were in the public’s interest, but it wasn’t clear when and how we made those determinations. Serving the public conversation includes providing the ability for anyone to talk about what matters to them; this can be especially important when engaging with government officials and political figures.”
If any tweet receives the notice, Twitter will not have it featured on the platform too many times. It will not appear any more in Safe search, the Top Tweets timeline, live events pages, recommended push notifications, the notifications tab, or the Explore page. The notice will not be applied ex post facto, it will only appear on tweets that have infringed.
A lot of criticism has been targeted towards Donald Trump in particular for going against some of Twitter’s rules. In 2017 for example, he tweeted a picture that displayed his wrestling with the CNN logo which a lot of people viewed as promoting violence at the media. Last year, Twitter deliberated on the issue that called for Trump’s banishment from use of the social media. In a blog post Twitter said, “Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate”.
We are not entirely sure how frequent this notice will be used mainly because Twitter wrote in a blog post that it will not be applied much.
“By nature of their positions these leaders have outsized influence and sometimes say things that could be considered controversial or invite debate and discussion,” today’s blog read. “A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable.”
