Twitter Will Hide, Not Remove, Tweets That Violate Copyrights

Twitter is changing how it handles legal requests against individual tweets that violate copyright. Rather than remove the tweets altogether, Twitter will now hide the tweets and show a message alerting readers that the original tweet is being withheld.

GigaOm first reported the news on Sunday, following a tweet from Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s manager of legal policy.

Kessel linked to the new policy in Twitter’s help center, which reads as follows:

In an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user-posted content, we clearly mark withheld Tweets and media to indicate to viewers when content has been withheld (examples below).

Here are those examples:

Tweets like that used to be removed completely — i.e., the URL would no longer resolve. Now, readers will be able to see why the tweet has been hidden.

Twitter has been quite pro-active in explaining how it handles legal requests surroundings its users and their tweets. In July, the company issued its first transparency report showing government and DMCA requests that it’s received.