Twitter to add Parental Controls to Streaming API

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Twitter has announced that it will soon be implementing a new field in their streaming API in order to help application developers filter out sensitive content. Will Twitter be censored soon?

Microblogging sites like Twitter give users complete freedom over what they say online, and this has brought about a lot of microblogging controversies. Some countries — like China — even ban Twitter altogether because of their potential for being a medium for dissent. But what if Twitter were to censor sensitive or “NSFW” material themselves? Twitter is doing just that. Developers are currently testing modifications to its API that will let app builders filter out content that is deemed “not safe for work,” so to speak.

Twitter isn’t currently implementing this, and we’re not sure whether they will add this feature on the web interface. But will Twitter be censoring a lot of stuff once this feature is up? The policy currently says they will remove anything that involves violence, nudity and medical procedures. Also, Twitter says they will give users the option to activate or deactivate these content filters. So if you’re not really that sensitive, then you can simply turn the filter off and get to read everything.

There’s one big issue here, though. The filters will depend on the person posting the tweet as a “sensitive” one. If there is no NSFW tag, then the post will not be caught by the filters. Kind of self-defeating, unless we can ensure everyone is trustworthy with what they tweet. It also depends on some cultural nuances or even personalities — what is “offensive” to someone might not necessarily be offensive to another person.