Skip to main content

Twitter is tweaking its algorithms after a bug hid results for LGBT keywords

twitter
Emevil/123RF
After users pointed out searches for LGBT terms like #bisexual and #gay failed to turn up any search results last week, Twitter is updating an outdated search algorithm designed to hide sensitive topics. On Monday, November 6, Twitter apologized for the error and said that the missing search results were part of a technical bug.

Twitter says that sensitive media is collapsed in the search results and when all the results are collapsed, the search will turn up a “no results” message. The search terms themselves were not meant to categorize a tweet as sensitive material, Twitter says, but only to alert the program to look for explicit content. A list of sensitive words, such as the LGBT terms that weren’t showing up in the search results, triggers a look into the tweet containing one of those words for explicit content, but the terms themselves do not automatically mark tweets as explicit, Twitter said.

Recommended Videos

“As outlined in our media policy,” the company said via a tweet series, “media that may be considered sensitive is collapsed in places such as search results, meaning that images and videos would be presented as a link, not automatically updated. One of the signals we use to identify sensitive media is a list of terms that frequently appear alongside adult content. Many of these words on the list are not inherently explicit, which is why they must be used alongside other signals to determine if content is sensitive.”

While the lists were not supposed to mark content as explicit based on those terms alone, Twitter says an error allowed the tweets to be categorized solely on the text on not the context of those tweets. One of the lists, Twitter says, was also outdated and “included terms that are primarily used in non-sensitive contexts.”

The social media platform says that it has removed the terms that should not have been included on that list and is continuing to work on the issue to fully correct the bug.

Twitter is already revising its community guidelines with stricter policies on hate speech and harassment, changes sparked by the #WomenBoycotTwitter protest that will roll out over the next few months.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
Elon Musk reportedly tweaked algorithm to boost his tweets
A digital image of Elon Musk in front of a stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating.

What can you do if Twitter fails to prioritize your tweets as much as you'd like it to?

Well, if you happen to own the social media platform, you could simply get someone to make a few phone calls to Twitter engineers and tell them to tweak the relevant algorithm.

Read more
Twitterrific shuts down after being blocked by Twitter
The Twitterrific bird.

The maker of Twitterrific, a third-party Twitter app for macOS and iOS that launched in 2007 and came to the iPhone before Twitter itself, has been left with no choice but to close it down.

In a message posted on its website on Thursday, The Iconfactory, Twitterrific's developer, said: "We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter -- a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”

Read more
Twitter finally confirms it’s behind outage of third-party Twitter apps
A stylized composite of the Twitter logo.

Twitter has finally confirmed what everyone pretty much already knew -- that it’s behind the outage of popular third-party Twitter clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific.

In a message posted on its Twitter Dev account for developers, the company said: “Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working.” But it declined to offer any details about what API rules the developers of the third-party apps have violated.

Read more