About specific instances when a Tweet’s reach may be limited
People may express themselves on Twitter as long as they do not violate our Twitter Rules. We do not block, limit, or remove content based on an individual’s views or opinions. In some situations, your Tweet may not be seen by everyone, as outlined below:
1. Violation of the Twitter Rules
Where appropriate, we will restrict the reach of Tweets that violate our policies and create a negative experience for other users by making the Tweet less discoverable on Twitter. Learn more here about our range of enforcement options.
We’ve developed a set of tools that enable people to control what they see on Twitter.
- Block — Block enables people to prevent someone from seeing their content or contacting them when logged in to Twitter.
- Mute — Mute enables people to avoid content they don’t want to see without letting other people know they’ve been muted. People can mute other accounts, specific keywords from appearing in Notifications, their Home timeline, and entire conversations.
- Notification filters — We enable people to filter their notifications so they do not need to see Tweets from certain types of accounts, like those without a profile photo, unverified email address or phone numbers, and from accounts they do not follow.
We are constantly working on improving core parts of the Twitter experience, including the timeline, conversations, and search so that people see content that they are most interested in and contributes to the conversation in a meaningful way, such as content that is relevant, credible, and safe.
We have also developed "safe search" functionality which removes Tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and Tweets from blocked and muted accounts from search results. As part of this, our team has been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward. These Tweet replies are still accessible to those who seek them out.
We use a variety of behavior-based signals to inform how we rank content, such as who you follow, what conversations you join, and if someone is muted or blocked and by whom. For example, if you Tweet to a number of accounts and they block or mute you, we have a strong signal that those accounts do not want to see your Tweets. Or, if everyone responds when you mention them in a Tweet that demonstrates to us that they want to join the conversation. No one signal is used in isolation – the system uses many signals to continually determine how each account should be ranked.
We are constantly running experiments on Twitter which may limit the reach of certain Tweets. If we decide to make a feature or experience generally available, we will update the community and this Help Center page.
5. Legal, quality, and technical issues
We may limit a Tweet’s reach if it violates our Twitter Rules or applicable laws, or is determined to be low quality. For more information on instances where we may withhold a Tweet in a specific country, please see this Help Center article.
Some people report issues related to their Tweets not appearing on Twitter or their replies detaching from an original Tweet that happen outside of enforcement actions and safety features. These cases may be the result of a Tweet being identified as spam by our systems or may be due to some current technical issues and limitations of the service. We use @TwitterSupport to update the community about technical issues like these.
If you notice other instances where Tweets are not appearing, we encourage you to let us know by reporting the issue.