Twitter Testing New Feature To Improve Image Sharing; Is It In Response To Racism Concerns?

The new move to improve image sharing on Twitter may remind people of a controversy that ensued alleging its algorithm of being racist. Read on.

Representative Photo: Getty Images

New Delhi: Popular microblogging platform is currently testing a new image sharing feature for Android and iOS. This format is being tried for single-image tweets.

Informing about the same, Twitter shared details of the test being conducted. The new feature will allow single photos to be displayed in the original ratio while currently, Twitter algorithms automatically change image ratios in preview to display them in the users' timeline.

"Sometimes it's better said with a picture or a video. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be testing some ways to improve how you can share and view media on Twitter," the support page stated. 

Twitter is "Now testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better".

Adding to this, the support handle wrote, "We’re testing ways for you to upload and view 4K images on Android and iOS".

Those who are a part of the test drive will have to update their high-quality image preferences in the “Data usage” settings to be able to see the desired changes.

This may remind people of a controversy that ensued on the micro-blogging platform, alleging the algorithm of being racist as it was seen to be prioritising white faces than people of color in its preview in several cases.

"With this test, we hope to learn if this new approach is better and what changes we need to make to provide a ‘what you see is what you get' experience for Tweets with images,"
 Dantley Davis, Chief Design Officer at Twitter wrote in a tweet.