Twitter Claims Incredibly High Performance on Content Moderation, in Contrast to Third-Party Reports

Okay, we’re going to get asked about this, which is the one reason I’m going to cover it – because really, it’s not possible to look at such claims with none access to the info in query.

Today, Twitter tweeted out a brand new claim that ‘greater than 99.99% of Tweet impressions are from healthy content, or content that doesn’t violate our rules’.

As per Twitter:

“On Twitter individuals are free to be their true selves. On a regular basis, we work to preserve free speech on Twitter, while equally maintaining the health of our platform. For the reason that launch of ‘Freedom of Speech Not Reach’, we’ve seen encouraging results. That is why in the approaching weeks, we’re expanding the applying of this enforcement motion from our Hateful Conduct policy to now include our policies on Abusive Behavior and Violent Speech.”

Twitter’s ‘Freedom of Speech Not Reach’ approach, which it outlined back in April, essentially explains that Twitter’s now looking to cut back the reach of some less violative content within the app, despite it technically breaking its rules, versus removing such outright. Twitter has also added labels to those tweets, to make clear when such motion has been initiated.

As Twitter notes, originally, this approach was only applied to tweets that will previously have been deemed in violation of its Hateful Conduct policy, however it’s now trying to expand this same systematic enforcement motion to abusive and violent tweets as well.

To be clear, Twitter’s rules around such content haven’t modified, but its enforcement approach is different, in that previous Twitter management would have removed more of these kind of comments outright – but now, Twitter’s taking a more lenient approach, by reducing their reach as a substitute.

And Twitter says that that is working – with a staggeringly low 0.01% of tweets that violate its rules now being seen by any users in any respect.

Which seems not possible, based on overall industry trends, and external reporting on Twitter specifically.

For instance, the prevalence of comparable violations on Facebook on Instagram sits at around 0.05% – and Meta has much more staff, and much more advanced systems working to handle such across its apps. The suggestion that Twitter has someway been capable of best this, after culling 80% of its staff, including lots of the individuals who were working on addressing these elements, seems questionable at best.

There have also, as noted, been a variety of third-party evaluation reports which suggest, for instance, that antisemitic tweets have develop into more common since Elon Musk took over on the app, that slurs against Black and transgender people have also increased, while hate speech, generally, has also develop into more prevalent amid the app’s broader changes in approach. Twitter’s also facing legal motion in each Australia and Germany for failing to remove hate speech in a timely manner.

As we’ve reported previously, a few of the conflicting figures here seem to return right down to various definitions of what actually qualifies as hate speech, and the way Twitter itself is measuring such. But we don’t understand how Twitter has come to this recent 99.99% figure, because there’s no evidence – the Twitter team hasn’t provided any actual data or insight to back this number up.

So it’s just ‘take out word for it’, that someway, Twitter has achieved record-setting results sparsely performance, despite cutting the vast majority of its staff, and in contrast to external academic evaluation, which points to the other.

I’m not saying that it’s not right, but I don’t know, and also you don’t know either, because Twitter hasn’t explained itself in any way.

So what meaning, ultimately, I don’t know.

But sure, it’s a powerful figure, I suppose.