You soon won’t have to rely on third-party websites to check whether your X (Twitter) account has been shadow-banned. The platform is adding a new alert that will notify users if their tweets’ visibility is being suppressed.
Andrea Conway, a designer at X, showed what the feature will look like.
A small prompt reads, “We’ve added a label to your account which may impact its reach.” Upon clicking on Learn more in the prompt, users would reach an information page that has answers to questions like “Why does my account have a label” and “What does this mean for my account?”
According to the label information, users can be shadow-banned if their tweets contain sensitive media, such as graphic, violent, nudity, sexual behaviour, hateful symbols or other sensitive content.
starting transparency somewhere pic.twitter.com/QUNKga1t4I
— Andrea Conway (@ehikian) September 26, 2023
Further, accounts that have a label will have their posts sometimes covered with a warning to allow people to avoid it. Users may also be restricted from appearing in the For You and Following timelines, recommended notifications, trends and search results.
The page also includes an appeal button, so users can ask X to review its decision. Conway noted that the feature was still in development and that the wording and user interface may change.
X hopes that launching the new feature will increase transparency and trust with its users. It’s not clear when the feature will be available to the public, but Conway said that X “should have more to share on this soon.”
While features like shadow-ban prompts will promote transparency, decisions like removing the option to report misinformation do the opposite. It’s unclear why this option has been remove, though you can read more about it here.
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