Twitter rolled out new features on Monday, July 10, to curb abusive and troll-like behavior and interactions on its platform, one of the chief problems the site has been criticized for.
Twitter Rolls Out New Filter Settings
Twitter said its updated advanced filter settings will now offer options for users to mute notifications from accounts they're not following in addition to ones that aren't following them. Moreover, users can also begin to filter low-quality content from notifications such as ones which appear to be automated. They may also now mute tweets based on certain words or phrases.
Trolls have been a perennial problem for many Twitter users, especially when such accounts barge in on users and bombard them with a spate of offensive, hateful, and troll messages. If you've been one of those on the receiving end of these messages, head over to Twitter, navigate to Notifications, then Settings, then select the Advanced Filters section. From there you can take advantage of the site's new mute options.
These new options follow Twitter's March rollout of options enabling users to silence accounts who haven't uploaded their profile picture or verified their email address or phone number. Not too long ago, the site also required filtering new Direct Messages into a Requests folder.
Twitter's Abuse And Harassment Problem
Twitter has met public disappointment for its seemingly lackluster approach to dealing with abuse and harassment problems on the site. The new options at least enable users in avoiding potential trolls from polluting their Twitter feed, but one can argue that such preventive measures don't actually take care of the problem and instead simply hides it from view.
Will These New Filter Settings Actually Do Anything?
The problem, as Twitter probably knows full well by now, is with trolls, fake accounts, and abusive messages. Giving users mute options won't extinguish them altogether.
In a way, unless Twitter highlights that there are actually options within its platform to mute certain users, the new filter settings might not do anything to help Twitter's abuse problem.
There are surely some users who likely won't dig deep enough to find that these options are there, understand interface terms, or realize what the options are for, exactly.
Still, Twitter's move could be an important next step in its efforts to combat trolls proliferating the site. The company has been in an awkward position lately, being one of this era's most popular and well-known platform yet failing to rake in significant earnings and be profitable.
We'll see if Twitter implements more filtration features or does more in the hopes of cleaning up its site by removing trolls and abusive accounts. Until then, these new options are the best options users can enable to shoo trolls away.
