# Can people request that Twitter search results be filtered? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-people-request-that-twitter-search-results-be-filtered/660514 "2013-06-09T00:35:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Claire98909](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@Claire98909](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claire98909)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-people-request-that-twitter-search-results-be-filtered/660514/1 "2013-06-09T00:35:12Z")
Suppose somebody has a secret that they don’t want to get out. For example, suppose a celebrity had a secret pregnancy in the past before she became famous and she doesn’t want anybody knowing about it. Can she request to the Twitter administrators that their name + certain words be filtered from the Twitter search results (not a Google search but the search box on the Twitter website)? For example, say there’s an actress named Natasha Mcgee and she was startled to see that somebody tweeted “Did @Natasha Mcgee have a baby in the past? This old photo shows a bump.” Could she then request to the Twitter admins that any search results with her name as well as the words “baby” or “pregnant” be filtered from the search results? Or do people simply have to deal with whatever tweets may pop up about them? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-people-request-that-twitter-search-results-be-filtered/660514/2 "2013-06-09T01:07:07Z")
If any random person, or even random celeb (how famous would you have to be to count, I wonder) , could do this, it would pretty much defeat the whole object of Twitter…So I am pretty confident the answer must be “No”. It is probably technically possible, and maybe you could force Twitter to do it with a court order, but I would expect them to fight any such order hard in the courts. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-people-request-that-twitter-search-results-be-filtered/660514/3 "2013-06-09T02:11:23Z")
I can’t prove this is impossible, but it’s not hard to imagine the flood of manipulative and malicious requests Twitter would receive if they did this. Why would Twitter voluntarily do this? It’s in their interest to try to make searches display the stuff that searchers want to see. Gossip especially so. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-people-request-that-twitter-search-results-be-filtered/660514/4 "2013-06-10T20:53:13Z")
If you have tweets you don’t want to find, just delete them from your feed. Or delete the whole account and start a new one. That’s a heck of a lot easier. You run the risk that Google’s indexed them, of course. You also run the risk that someone manually retweeted them (by copying the text and adding “RT” to the beginning.) There’s nothing to do about that. EDIT: Oh I read your post more carefully. You’re talking about deleting search terms on accounts you don’t own-- no there’s no way to do this. As other posters have pointed out, it kind of defeats the entire purpose of Twitter. Gossip happens; if you’re a celeb, that’s just part of the job. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-people-request-that-twitter-search-results-be-filtered/660514/5 "2013-06-11T19:40:34Z")
I can’t imagine anything that would be a better example of the [Streisand effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) than a celebrity trying to get Twitter to censor a search filter.