Twitter is no longer racist: From now on, the web interface also displays pictures without cropping

After displaying full-size images was introduced on mobile devices, Twitter stopped automatically cropping images in the web interface as well. The social network now displays full-size images across all platforms, after researchers and users discovered that the cropping algorithms were generally biased by race and gender.

If you post, for example, a photo in portrait format along with a tweet, it will now be displayed full vertically rather than cropped by the algorithm. However, tweets with images embedded in the website are still cropped to a more square format. And if you post a link to a web article with an image, regardless of aspect ratio or platform, it will automatically be cropped to 16:9 format. This is one of the reasons many news sites tweet links to articles with the main image embedded separately.

Twitter has changed the way photos are displayed after controversy over auto-crop. Some users noticed that when a photo with black and white faces was displayed, it was automatically cropped towards the white face. The researchers actually proved that there was a phenomenon of algorithmic racial bias.

Source: @TwitterSupport