X (Twitter) fixes bug that flagged posts as 'Sensitive Media'
OX (former Twitter) revealed, on Sunday (21), that it had fixed a bug that led to posts made on the social network being incorrectly flagged as “Sensitive Media”. Several reports about the problem emerged over the weekend, even affecting some advertisers.
This type of label is added to posts with content that other users may not want to see, such as violence or nudity. The flagged tweet restricts viewing of such materials, displaying the images blurred and requiring the person to click or tap the file to view it in full.
Today, a bug in our system caused X to incorrectly label numerous posts as Sensitive Media. We've fixed the underlying issue and are now working to remove labels from impacted posts.
—Safety (@Safety) January 21, 2024
But, according to the complaints, the old Twitter was even flagging photos and videos that did not contain sensitive materials, automatically, making it difficult for posts to engage. The flaw was also noticed by Elon Musk, who stated that it was the action of a spam bot.
“Today, a bug in our system caused X to incorrectly label several posts as 'Sensitive Media'. We've fixed the underlying issue and are now working to remove labels from affected posts”, declared the company, using the profile dedicated to security on the social network, @Safety.
Staff reduction and increase in problems
The social network X has been facing a series of problems related to the increase in spam in recent months. As noted by the TechCrunchdifficulties may be associated with the reduction of the workforce, which mainly affected the areas responsible for the security and global trust of the platform.
An investigation conducted by Australian authorities into the reactivation of banned profiles in the country, suggests the company fired approximately 80% of security engineers under Musk's administration. Teams that moderated content and could avoid problems such as inappropriately flagging posts as sensitive were greatly impacted.
The layoffs may also be related to other important bugs, such as the breaking of native images and links and the global Twitter outage, both of which occurred last year. X management declined to comment on the Australian cybersecurity office's report recently released by Forbes.
