Twitter is testing an easier way for people to add warnings to media

Twitter
Twitter (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Twitter is testing a change that will let people mark individual tweets as being problematic.
  • Twitter users can mark their entire account as containing sensitive media already, but this is a more granular option.
  • There's no telling when the feature will come to everyone's accounts.

Social network Twitter is testing a change that will make it easier for people to mark photos and videos as sensitive. The change means people can mark media as containing nudity, violence, or sensitive content as and when they post it.

While people can mark media with a warning now, they have to do it across their entire account. This change would allow people to do it on an ad-hoc basis for the first time — and Twitter says it's now testing it out with some people to see how it goes down.

Twitter made the announcement via its Twitter Safety account, complete with GIF showing the process people can follow when marking images and video as being "unsettling or sensitive."

Marking an image or video is as simple as tapping a flag icon in the editing screen, although it's possible the workflow could change as Twitter receives feedback.

Twitter isn't saying when this feature will be rolled out to everyone, likely because it might not at all. The company runs tests like this with a small group of people to see whether features should be made available to everyone although this one does seem something of a no-brainer. It's also a feature that will be specific to the official Twitter app, something that will be disappointing to those who don't believe it to be the best iPhone app for using the service.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.