Twitter lets you put content warnings on your tweets. Here's how to do it.
Twitter's 2021 test of user-added content warnings was apparently a success. The feature is now live.
The company confirmed on Friday that Twitter users accessing the social media platform on Android, iOS, and the web can now add content warnings to any photos or videos attached to their tweets. It's a relatively simple process that forces anyone who wants to take a look at your posted media to manually click past a prompt first.
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It's not a perfect implementation at this point. The content warning doesn't show up when a tweet that has one is embedded. The warnings also aren't visible in third-party Twitter apps — I use Tweetdeck and they're not showing up there.
Still, the process of adding a content warning is easy enough. And the feature should improve over time. Here's how to take advantage.
Create your tweet, attach any media
Yeah, the tweet comes first. Don't post it yet, but create your tweet. Add whatever media you plan to use. Then click or tap the "Edit" button to open up Twitter's built-in editing tools.
Click the content warning icon
Once the Twitter edit tools pop up, look near the top of the window. You should see a few different tabs. The default one is for cropping and resizing, as indicated by the crop icon. The middle one, labeled "ALT," is for alt text, a basic description of the contents of whatever media you're sharing. Alt text is used by screen readers to help those who may not be able to see the media you're sharing know what's there.
In this case, though, the third icon is the one we want. It looks like a little flag.
Select your warning
Clicking or tapping the flag icon opens up the content warning tab. You'll quickly notice there are three options to choose from here: Nudity, Violence, or Sensitive.
Choose whichever one is most appropriate for your media share, this appears to be the user's prerogative. So if you want to, say, stick a spoiler-y movie clip behind a content warning, the lack of a "spoiler" tag doesn't mean any of the others is the "wrong" choice. Your best bet is to go with "sensitive" in any situation where the thing you want to share isn't an easy fit in any of the categories.
You can select multiple warnings if you want. Once you check one of the boxes, the editing tools' preview window shows you what the warning will actually look like once it's live. Once you've got your warning set, click or tap "Save" and you'll be taken back to the original post editor.
Publish your tweet
At this point, you should be done and ready to publish your tweet (unless there's more you want to add). So do that. Anyone who looks at your post on Twitter official, whether it's the app or browser interface, will see a warning in front of your media just like it appeared in the preview.
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Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
