Quite a few people were upset upon discovering Twitter had blocked the search for the word “bisexual” in photos and news earlier today. However, Twitter says the removal of search results for certain terms were “an error.”
We’ve identified an error with search results for certain terms. We apologize for this. We’re working quickly to resolve & will update soon.
— Support (@Support) November 5, 2017
Removal of a term labeling one’s sexuality could be seen as a form of discrimination and purposely disallowing people to search for related items such as images and news articles about this term would be horrifying.
While we don’t yet know how this happened, some aren’t convinced this was an accident.
Really hope you mean this "error" wasn't premeditated discrimination. Where is your internal diversity & inclusion committee on this?
— Emily Jacob (@emventureEm) November 5, 2017
Twitter now tells TechCrunch “teams are working quickly to resolve” and that it will share more “as we have it.” We’ve checked and as of this writing it seems the problem persists.
It should also be noted that the removal only seems to affect the label of sexuality. However, other possibly offensive words (depending on how they are used, i.e. in a historical context) like “Hitler,” or “Nazi” were not removed, as tweeter Grady Brooch pointed out.
However, terms such as #hitler and #nazi remain valid.
@TwitterSupport this is wrong on many dimensions
(And BTW I am #straight) https://t.co/HgXWaZDUZa
— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) November 5, 2017
In other news, Twitter still has that pesky Russian bot problem for its engineering team to tackle as well, though we haven’t heard how that one will be resolved as of yet — or if it will anytime soon.
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