Twitter Apologizes for ‘Bisexual’ Search Glitch, Promises Fix

“Technical issue” will be fixed within 24 hours, says company

Twitter responded on Tuesday to the flack it has received for barring the word “bisexual” from appearing in its search results, saying in a series of tweets the “technical issue” stemmed from a list of words that “frequently appear alongside adult content.”

“Searches for certain words related to sexuality did not populate complete results. We apologize for anyone negatively impacted by this bug,” said a message from Twitter’s Support account.  “It is not consistent with our values as a company.”

Twitter searches for “bisexual” and “bisexuality” come up empty handed, with no results for “video,” and only a few stray tweets for “news” and “photo” searches. Many LGBTQ users on the social platform noticed the dearth of content, bringing it to Twitter’s attention.

Twitter said it’ll be auditing its list of banned terms and “making changes during the next 24 hours to correct this mistake.”

The San Francisco-based company has moved to being more decisive in how it regulates content on its platform. Wired had a look at an internal email last month that showed Twitter will be cracking down on “non-consensual nudity” and “unwanted sexual advances.” The platform will also be looking closer at content that “glorifies” violence and posts from hate groups. And now, you can add tweaking its search results to its list of fixes.

Comments