Twitter Will Call Out Rule-Breakers

For the past year or so, Twitter has focused on updating its rules and policy to beef up safety, but with that comes a need for increased transparency. Today, Twitter announced a couple of new features focused on just that. They're relatively small changes in the grand scheme of things, but they should prove useful to larger Twitter userbase nonetheless.

Soon, Twitter will show you the difference between a tweet that was deleted by the user and one that was deleted because Twitter itself decided to take action. When you view someone's profile (or try to view the offending tweet directly), you'll now see a message when it was deleted because of a rules violation.

That message appears in place of the tweet on the user's timeline and includes links to both Twitter's rules and an article that explains how those rules are enforced. Twitter says that the alert will stay in place for 14 days after the tweet has been deleted, so it should become more clear when offensive or otherwise rule-breaking tweets have been purged because of action from Twitter.

On top of that, you'll also now be able to hide tweets that you've reported, which sounds like a feature Twitter users have requested often. Reported tweets will be flagged and hidden from view behind an alert seemingly across the entirety of Twitter, which means that you'll see these alerts on your own timeline and on specific profiles. You can, if you choose, view the tweet after it's been reported, but by default, it'll be hidden.

So, while these aren't exactly earth-moving new features, they will be handy for those who want more transparency when it comes to why tweets were deleted or don't want to see tweets they've flagged as offensive. Twitter says that its alerts for rules violations will begin rolling out in the coming weeks, while the feature that lets you hide reported tweets is going live today.