X adds account-level notices for government content restrictions
X has expanded its Under the Hood transparency tool so users can see when their accounts or individual posts have had visibility limited because the company was complying with local laws. The update also identifies posts withheld in a country after a legal demand and names the country that made the request.
The feature extends the tool X introduced in August to show labels applied to accounts and posts that may have affected distribution. Before that rollout, users could not directly inspect how labels and downranking affected their own content, even as accusations of “shadowbanning” were common on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Government filtering becomes visible at account level
Under the Hood now includes downranking connected to government-required content filtering. X said the expansion followed positive feedback about greater visibility into such restrictions. Rather than reporting only aggregate government-request data, the company is exposing relevant information to the affected account holder and at the post level.
Users can find Under the Hood in the X app settings. Anyone who has posted at least 10 times during the month can download aggregate statistics as a JSON file. The standard data-format file shows labels applied to an account and its posts over the prior month; it will now also record whether local-law compliance reduced their visibility.
What the downloaded file can show
The export can identify content that was withheld in a specific country following a legal demand, alongside the country responsible for the request. Governments make such demands under a range of rules, including laws concerning hate speech, terrorism-related material and elections.
Free-expression groups have argued that these legal frameworks can also be used by some governments to suppress political dissent. X’s update does not remove the underlying restriction, but it gives affected users a way to distinguish a government-driven limit from an unexplained change in reach.
Part of a broader transparency push
The change follows other transparency initiatives at X. The company has open-sourced its For You recommendation algorithm, which selects posts for users’ main feed, and has added detail to other open-source code releases. Those materials include model configuration, filtering and core ranking-system information, including parameters that weight different signals.
For businesses, publishers and public-interest organizations, the new export offers a more concrete record when audience reach changes in particular markets. Teams that rely on X for communications can use the account-level information to document country-specific restrictions and assess how local legal demands affect content distribution.