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. Abusive and spammy behavior
When a reported Tweet includes abusive content, we will take actions depending on the severity of the violation, the person’s previous record of violations, and the behavioral characteristics of the account. These actions include:
- Temporary account suspensions, where the account owner is prevented from using their account (including reading Tweets and taking actions like Tweeting and liking) until they complete specific instructions, which may include verifying their email address and phone number.
- Permanent account suspension, where we will permanently suspend an account that is repeatedly or egregiously violating our rules. Certain violations, like direct violent threats, result in immediate permanent account suspension.
Any additional account that the person owns or attempts to create in order to circumvent the suspension may also be permanently suspended.
2. Proactive detection of Tweets
Even if behavior isn’t reported, we use our technology to identify accounts that are engaging in what may be abusive or spammy behavior. When this happens, we take action by limiting certain account functionality, such as only distributing their Tweets to their followers. For example, this enforcement could come into effect if an account is repeatedly unsolicitedly Tweeting at non-followers or engaging in patterns of abusive behavior. It may also come into effect for spammy behavior such as aggressive following or other unusual behavior identified in the Twitter Rules.
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 Home 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.
6. 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.
Here are some issues that we are currently working to address:
- Replies not appearing — If you’re not seeing your reply below a Tweet, it may be because of an outstanding technical capacity limitation. When there are an overwhelming volume of replies to a Tweet, our platform is unable to show all of these replies. However, if your reply is showing up in your timeline, the Tweet author can, in most cases, view your reply in their Notifications.
- Quote Tweet timing out due to a bug — We’ve seen instances where Quote Tweet aren’t appearing. This is due to a bug with our infrastructure, which we are working to address.
If you notice other instances where Tweets are not appearing, we encourage you to let us know by reporting the issue.