Twitter Now Displays Messages for Tweets Blocked Due to Local Laws
Twitter, in a bid to balance transparency with users and their need to comply with local laws, have come up with an interim solution. As the platform announced on Wednesday, Dec. 20, users will now see messages if the post or account they are viewing have been withheld for legal or policy reasons.
It's a step towards avoiding what Twitter calls "silent removals" on their platform, as the social media service explained in their news post earlier this week. It's also their way of supporting the Country Withheld Content (CWC) tool, which forms part of their response to government requests and local laws, as far back as 2012.
Tweets and media posts that have been ordered to be withdrawn from public view will now be blocked out and replaced with an interstitial, showing the message similar to this: "This tweet from @username has been withheld in response to a legal demand."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
This and other similar messages will be followed by a Learn more link, which leads to Twitter support pages, including this explanation about CWC that has now been updated to reflect the announcement.
Posts affected by local policies, like a specific law in a country, for example, will now show a message similar to, "This tweet from @username has been withheld in based on local law(s)."
Account-wide blocks will have an appropriate message as well for an interstitial page that blocks out all elements of that account, including profile and banner images.
"Our goal is to help you better understand why you may not be able to view certain types of content as you interact with our service," Jeremy Kessel, Director of Global Legal Policy for Twitter, explained in their announcement.
"The more that we can share about our actions, the better the public can understand the various challenges, legal or otherwise, that we face and how we handle them," he added, perhaps referring to the large numbers of removal requests that Twitter has been faced with this year.
In their latest transparency report, the social media platform received requests aimed at about 14,120 accounts from January to June of 2017.
