After Bug Mistakenly Blocks Innocent Terms Relating to Sexuality, Twitter Apologises and Promises a Fix
On November 5th, Twitter were forced to issue an
apology after it was discovered that terms relating to sexuality most often
used in perfectly innocent circumstances, such as “bisexual”, were being
blocked in search results on the platform. The omission inspired calls of
discrimination at the hands of Twitter, who were seemingly refusing access to
not just news and other content, but a whole community on which many struggling
against the stigma often imposed upon the LGBTQ population have come to rely.
Further adding to the outrage was the fact that while terms
like “bisexual” were blocked, “Hitler” and “Nazi” remained fully-searchable,
and if you have to ask which of these terms is more likely to be associated
with sensitive or inappropriate content you have issues with which I am not
qualified to help.
Twitter have since reiterated their apology and offered an
explanation as to why the terms were blocked, and in the company’s defence this
does seem like a genuine mistake rather than an intentional act of
discrimination. According to Twitter the terms were blocked as they appeared on
an outdated list of terms that frequently appear alongside adult content, which
is used as a signal in the identification of sensitive media; they have now
admitted that that the list “incorrectly included terms that are primarily used
in non-sensitive contexts” and promised to implement changes which should
resolve the issue by the time of this article’s publication.
“We apologize for anyone negatively impacted by this bug. It
is not consistent with our values as a company,” Twitter said.
“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. Our
implementation of this list in search allowed Tweets to be categorized based
solely on text. The list was out of date [and] had not been maintained.
“We have audited the list and removed terms that should not
have been included. We are making changes during the next 24 hours to correct
this mistake.”
You can read Twitter’s full statement, courtesy of a thread
posted to their official support account, below:
1 / Late last week, we discovered a technical issue that affected search results: searches for certain words related to sexuality did not populate complete results. We apologize for anyone negatively impacted by this bug. It is not consistent with our values as a company.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) 7 November 2017
3 / 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.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) 7 November 2017
5 / When all Tweets containing certain terms were incorrectly collapsed on the photos, video and news search tabs, the search results in those tabs returned an error message indicating that no content was available.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) 7 November 2017
6 / We have audited the list and removed terms that should not have been included. We are making changes during the next 24 hours to correct this mistake. Once we are confident it is completely resolved, we’ll share an update here.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) 7 November 2017
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After Bug Mistakenly Blocks Innocent Terms Relating to Sexuality, Twitter Apologises and Promises a Fix
Reviewed by Unknown
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Friday, November 10, 2017
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Friday, November 10, 2017
Rating:
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