Tweets are disappearing on Twitter. Why?

Twitter’s appeal has long been connected in part to its reputation as a user-controlled firehose, as opposed to a place where an algorithm determines what you see and don’t see. But that’s changed recently, at least incrementally.

The company rolled out two abuse filters in spring 2015, to help improve Twitter’s response to harassment on its site: an opt-in, aggressive quality filter for any verified Twitter user; and a second, less comprehensive abuse screener that’s currently being tested on all users of the site, with no option to opt out, apparently. These measures have been welcomed by many who advocated for the site to find a better way to address harassment. But a recent spate of mysteriously disappearing tweets triggered an intense debate over how the social networking site handles objectionable content -- and to what extent the site has begun to filter content automatically.