Do you use Twitter? Do you oppose censorship? Would you prefer to decide for yourself what sort of content you are exposed to rather than someone you don't know deciding on your behalf? If you answered "yes" to these questions, you may be interested in disabling Twitter's latest attempt to protect you from views that may differ from your own.Evidently, Twitter has not only developed a new "quality filter," but they have turned it on for all users by default. That means that this filter is now active on your account. The good news is that it is easy to turn it off.
Here's how to do it:
- Log in to your Twitter account from your computer.
- Click your avatar on the upper right-hand corner of the screen (profile and settings) and select "Settings."
- Select "Notifications" from the menu on the left side of the page.
- Uncheck the box next to "Quality filter" and hit "Save changes."
Perhaps this filter is far more innocent than how I have made it sound. The problem is, we really don't know. Twitter has been anything but transparent about how the filter works. If the content I have access to on Twitter is filtered, I want to be the one making all the decisions about how it is filtered. Given Twitter's recent record, I am not interested in them doing it for me.
I expect what I am about to say will strike most of you as obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway because I know it is not obvious to some. It seems to me that it is just a matter of time before Twitter and other social media companies begin shielding users from atheist content. Facebook has already been accused of doing this to shield Muslims from criticism of their religion. While I'm not entirely sure whether all the accusations I've heard are accurate, I believe that this is something against which we should be prepared to take a stand. And so, I hope that Twitter will see large numbers of people rejecting their filter.
