X expands transparency tools to show government-ordered content restrictions
X has expanded its “Under the Hood” transparency tool to show eligible users when posts or accounts have been restricted in a country because of local laws or legal demands.
- X now shows eligible users when local laws have restricted their posts or account visibility.
- Reports can identify countries where posts were withheld following legal demands.
- The update expands X’s existing “Under the Hood” transparency reporting system.
Social media platform X has expanded its transparency tools to allow users to see when their posts or accounts have had their visibility restricted because of government requests or legal requirements in a particular country.
The company announced the change on 19 September through its X Open Source account, saying its “Under the Hood” feature would now show whether an account or its posts had their visibility limited because X was complying with local laws.
The report can also identify posts that have been withheld in a particular country following a legal demand and specify which country made the request.
The change provides users with information about restrictions that previously were not directly visible at account or post level. X's announcement referred specifically to government-required content filtering and legal demands made by countries.
How the new transparency tool works
Under the expanded system, eligible users can download an account report from the “Under the Hood” section of X. The information is provided as a JSON file, a standard format for storing and transferring structured data.
The report covers labels applied to an account or its posts during the previous month. The latest update adds information on whether the visibility of the account or posts was restricted because of compliance with local laws.
X said the expanded feature is available to accounts that meet its basic eligibility requirements: users must have posted at least 10 times during the previous month and have an account that is at least one year old.
The information can distinguish between content whose visibility has been limited and posts that have been withheld in a specific country following a legal demand. It also identifies the country associated with the request.
Government requests can involve different laws
Government requests for content restrictions can arise from different types of national laws and regulations.
X's announcement refers broadly to compliance with local law rather than identifying specific countries or individual government requests.
Technology publication TechCrunch reported that such demands can involve laws covering areas including hate speech, terrorism-related material and elections.
The new feature does not mean that every reduction in the reach of a post is the result of a government request. It specifically adds information about visibility restrictions associated with X's compliance with local laws.
The terminology also relates to the commonly used term “shadowban”, which generally describes a situation in which a platform reduces the visibility or distribution of a user's content without an obvious notification to the user.
X's new report provides information about certain visibility restrictions rather than treating all changes in post reach as government-related.
Part of broader transparency changes
The update follows X's launch of the “Under the Hood” tool in August, when the company introduced a way for users to examine information about labels and other actions that could affect the visibility of their accounts and posts.
At the same time, X expanded access to parts of the code behind its recommendation systems. The company released the source code for the “For You” timeline, which determines the posts presented in users' main feeds, along with additional information about its ranking and filtering systems.
X said the aim of those changes was to give the public greater ability to examine how posts are distributed on the platform.
The latest update extends that information to government-required restrictions. Rather than relying only on aggregated transparency reports, eligible users can now obtain account-level information showing whether specific posts or accounts were affected by legal requirements in particular countries.
The change comes as governments around the world increasingly use national laws and regulatory mechanisms to require online platforms to restrict or remove content within their jurisdictions.
Under X's updated system, users can now see when a local-law restriction is recorded as affecting their own content and the country associated with the legal demand.
