Twitter to attempt to address conversation gaps caused by hidden tweets

Twitter's self-service tool for blocking content you don't want to see (as well as a growing tendency for users to delete a lot of the content they post) is making some of the conversations on the platform look like Swiss cheese. The company says in the next few weeks it will introduce added "context" on content that's unavailable in conversations to help make these gaps at least less mystifying.

There are any number of reasons why tweets in a conversation you stumble upon might not be viewable, including that a poster has a private account, that the tweet was taken down due to a policy violation, that it was deleted after the fact or that specific keywords present in those posts are muted by a user.

We're fixing the issue where you see so many "This Tweet is unavailable" notices in conversations. This is usually due to deleted or protected Tweets, or muted keywords.

In a few weeks, you'll start seeing more context on each notice to help explain why Tweets are unavailable. https://t.co/0iW8Eclwvg

- Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 18, 2019

Twitter's support account notes that the fix will involve providing "more context" alongside the notice that tweets in the conversation are "unavailable," which, especially when presented in high volume, doesn't really offer much help to a confused user.

Last year, Twitter introduced a new process for adding additional context and transparency to why an individual tweet was deleted, and it generally seems interested in making sure that conversations on the platform are both easy to follow and easy to access and understand for users who may not be as familiar with Twitter's behind-the-scenes machinations.