To make its policing of bad actors a little more obvious, Twitter is instituting new policies that should help users hide offensive content and see what happens after a tweet gets reported.
Scheduled to roll out over the next week or so, Twitter’s new guidelines state that after a tweet has been deemed to be in violation of its rules, Twitter will display a notice on the tweet and the offending account for two weeks after the tweet gets deleted.
Additionally, to ensure that people aren’t forced to constantly see a tweet after reporting it, Twitter will start hiding potentially offending content with a new notice like the one pictured above. If, for some reason, you still want to see that tweet again, you can tap or click the notice to view it normally.
Twitter’s new guidelines come after new rules regarding how Twitter handles spam accounts and widespread criticism that social media companies need to do more to protect their users from various forms of online attacks and harassment.
However, the reasoning behind certain decisions such as keeping notices for only 14 days instead of making them permanent isn’t quite clear.
Either way, this isn’t the last time Twitter will need to update its policies to better serve its users. But hopefully, by making it easier to hide offensive tweets and see when people violated its polices, Twitter will be a slightly more civilised, transparent place.
[Engadget]