With Elon Musk taking over Twitter, the popular social media platform is going through a lot of policy changes. Twitter has been in controversy since Elon Musk took over a few months ago, and his recent policy of hiding certain search terms from Twitter search results has anime fans worried.
If you follow a lot of anime accounts on Twitter, you might have seen ‘Loli’ in the trending section a few days ago, however, when you click on it, nothing appears. In fact, if you search ‘Loli’ on Twitter, it will not show you any results and a ‘something went wrong, try reloading’ notification will appear on your screen.
As it turns out, Twitter has blocked some terms on its search engine, in order to fight against child por*ographic material on Twitter. For that reason, search terms like ‘Loli’ and ‘Lolicon’ are blocked on Twitter. You can still Tweet including these terms, however, the tweet will only be visible to those who follow you.
Twitter is not the first social media to block the ‘Loli’ term on their platform. A few months back, Facebook which has the largest social media users, blocked this controversial term from appearing in the Facebook search.
Loli means a young looking female character in the anime and manga industry. Of course the term can be misused to share and find sexual images of minors, which is why the term has been controversial from the beginning. On the other hand, artists who draw Loli characters often use the hashtag so that more people could find their art. But according to Twitter’s new policy, these artists won’t be able to reach new fans.
Do you think banning the search terms like these are the right decision by Twitter? Let us know your opinion in the comment section down below.
