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I want to come back to this and say a bit more, because Twitter screwing with search results like this is a really really bad idea.
To recap: A few days ago, Twitter stopped letting you search for certain specific terms in photo searches on the site.
If you want to search for photos of a "butt," for instance, you can't. Twitter won't let you. Ditto "dyke" and "bisexual."
The banned search words seem to be mostly sexual terms and slurs—but there are inconsistencies in the application of the rules.
So you can do a Twitter photo search on "vulva," "breast," or "nipple," but not "vagina," "clitoris," or "penis."
As a couple of days ago, "kike" was allowed—presumably because of the baseball player—but it's gone now.
Not included in the ban are any white supremacist phrases: "Swastika" is fine, as are "1488," "white pride," etc.
Now, there are a few problems with this. First there's the obvious fact that it's ham-handed half-assed censorship, treating us like babies.
Second, there's the weirdness of Twitter devoting resources to keep us from finding photos of "boobs" while Nazis have the run of the place.
Third, there's the fact that this kind of censorship defines non-raunchy phrases (bisexual, etc) as raunchy, perpetuating social stigma.
Fourth, there's the fact that it places a taint on terms that some within marginalized subcultures embrace. (Dyke, faggot, etc.)
("Taint" is still allowed, by the way. FOR NOW.)
Fifth, the distinctions are ridiculously arbitrary—as of right now, for instance, you can do a photo search for "fag," but not "faggot."
Sixth, this kind of censorship is an intentional degradation of the quality of the platform. It's Twitter breaking itself on purpose.
When Twitter blocks us from seeing the results of certain kinds of searches, it prevents us from knowing what's happening on Twitter.
(It's not hard to imagine folks deploying these search-blackout terms to keep people from finding tweets they want to keep in the shadows.)
But there's a broader problem here that I want to talk about a bit, one that won't fit into 140 characters.
For all the calls for transparency from Twitter, a lot of what it does to protect users from abuse etc is intentionally opaque, and rightly.
(One thing: Image searches on banned terms will still produce results if the banned term is used in a username. Forgot to say that earlier.)
If Twitter publishes rules saying that X is abuse but Y is just-barely-not-abuse, abusers will swarm their targets with Y.
Explicit, public, rigid rules on the particulars of allowed/disallowed behavior in a community are an invitation to game the system.
If Twitter excludes a certain racial slur from search results, that'll encourage racist groups to migrate to a different, more obscure slur.
They get to keep spreading their nastiness, and the rest of us get the false impression that Twitter is keeping it off the site.
Note that they can continue using banned terms—we just can't see them doing it. We're not protected from them, they're protected from us.
That's the seventh reason this is a bad idea, I guess. Here's number eight: It's gonna cause a million time-draining fights on the platform.
Remember a few years ago when a bunch of us wasted a zillion hours we'll never get back yelling about the Trending Topics algorithm?
Were trends being censored? Was the algorithm biased? Were there tricks to get something to trend? I'm exhausted just remembering it.
This is going to be that times a thousand, because we'll have enough information to ramp up the outrage on a thousand different fights.
We're seeing this happen with "bisexual." Banning that word from photo searches is stupid, bigoted, and offensive. So we're gonna fight it.
And after a bunch of time and energy, we'll win that fight (note to @Twitter: cave on "bisexual" now and save us the trouble).
But as soon as a fight's over, there'll be another messier one. Imagine the arguments over whether "tranny" should be banned. Or "gypsy."
I'm calling it now: If Twitter doesn't reverse this policy, it's going to keep blowing up in a thousand different ways forever.
Here's your first one for free, Twitter: You killed photo searches on a zillion ethnic slurs, but left "retarded" up. Great job. Well done.
If Twitter leaves searches unfiltered, they're not responsible for the results. If they filter at all, they're responsible for EVERYTHING.
Every decision to block, every decision to not block, is on them, and every single one is a potential site of outrage and pain.
This is just a breathtakingly stupid policy, one that flies in the face of everything we know about managing online communities.
I didn't write a thorough thread on it three days ago partly because Iassumed it was going to be reversed immediately. Silly me.
Anyway, yes, the decision to ban "bisexual" is egregious. The decision to ban "vagina" but not "vulva" is dunderheaded.
Banning "wetback" but not "spic" makes no sense, and leaving up "retarded" while banning "butt" is just gross.
But you don't solve the problem, @Twitter, by "fixing" these mistakes, by tweaking individual decisions on what to ban and what to leave.
It's a bad policy that can't be made good. Reverse it now, and save us all a lot of time and wasted energy. Lemon out.
