Twitter adds an NSFW flag for sensitive Tweets

Starting today, Twitter has announced that developers will have access to a new field in the Twitter API called “possibly_sensitive”. This field will eventually allow developers to build an option into their clients that allows users to flag links or pictures that they post on twitter as NSFW or “Not Safe For Work”.

Currently if users post questionable content, they can be reported by other Twitter users. Once reported, Twitter follows a procedure to review the content:

We label the media as being possibly sensitivechange your account setting to “Mark my media as containing potentially sensitive content” so that future uploads are marked accordinglyYou will receive an email letting you know that we’ve labeled your media and changed your media setting. You will be able to change your media settings on your account settings page, though this image and any other images that have been labeled will remain marked as “possibly sensitive”.

If you’re a Twitter user that posts content that may be sensitive, then you do have the option of preemptively changing your account settings to reflect that what you post is sensitive.

If developers adopt this new flag, and the additional API’s that will take advantage of it, it will allow users of their client to toggle individual posts as sensitive more easily. Any images marked as sensitive will have a warning message inserted that any user clicking on it will see first, before viewing the image. If you’ve changed your account settings to show you sensitive content, you’ll be able to see it without the warning message.