Twitter will limit the reach of tweets if politicians break the rules

Twitter has been working on improving the experience for a while now and as such, the company has made some changes to its policies to moderate abusive behaviour by certain politicians and government officials. Twitter first talked about the issue back in June when the company said it will put a notice on tweets that violate its policies.

Now, Twitter has published a new blog post which confirms that the company is serious about moderating abusive behaviour. In the blog post, Twitter laid down ground rules and the penalties for breaking them. The company plans to prevent users from commenting, liking or event retweeting tweets that break its rules. Surprisingly Twitter users will still be able to see the tweet but they won’t be able to interact with it. Twitter said they want “to limit the tweet’s reach while maintaining the public’s ability to view and discuss it”.

If Twitter identifies a tweet to be in violation of the rules, they will limit the user’s ability to interact with the tweet. Users will see a notice that states “The Twitter rules about abusive behavior apply to this tweet. However, Twitter has determined it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain available.”

Twitter noted that they have used the public interest exception fewer than five times in 2018.