Twitter is ramping up its efforts to crack down on abusive tweets and has now announced a new update designed to make Twitter safer.
As online abuse is becoming increasingly prevalent in the internet era, Twitter has been taking steps to counter it. The company announced a crackdown on abusive tweets a while ago, and it's now stepping up its game by adding three more changes designed to help users enjoy a cleaner Twitter experience.
Fighting Online Abuse On Twitter
In a new blog post announcing the latest update on safety, Twitter details that it's cracking down harder now on abusers who create new accounts in order to keep trolling those who blocked them.
This has been a consistent issue and weakness for Twitter, as new accounts keep popping up and continuing the abuse right where the blocked ones left off. Twitter has been trying to fight this alarming trend, but previous efforts to address it proved to be insufficient.
"Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus. We stand for freedom of expression and people being able to see all sides of any topic," says the company. "That's put in jeopardy when abuse and harassment stifle and silence those voices. We won't tolerate it and we're launching new efforts to stop it."
With this in mind, Twitter is now introducing three changes aiming to curb online abuse by making it harder to create new abusive accounts, showing safer search results, and hiding potentially abusive or low-quality tweets.
Stopping Abusers From Creating New Accounts
Twitter says it's working on identifying abusive users who have been permanently suspended and prevent them from creating new accounts. This measure focuses on frequent and damaging types of behavior and proves effective particularly when it comes to accounts solely created to harass and abuse others.
Safe Search Results
Twitter is also taking steps toward "safe search," which is designed to automatically remove tweets with potentially sensitive content or from accounts that are blocked and muted. These types of tweets will not appear in search results, as Twitter will hide them before users even get to see them. Nevertheless, users who want to see these hidden tweets will be able to discover them. This measure aims to clean up search results, but it doesn't remove the tweets altogether. Twitter offers more details on its support page.
Collapsing Low-Quality Or Abusive Tweets
Lastly, the third change Twitter has in mind involves identifying potentially abusive or low-quality tweet replies and collapsing them, leaving the most relevant conversations more visible. Simply put, it acts like a filter for the conversations on Twitter, aiming to keep things cleaner and more relevant. The low-quality or abusive tweet replies will still be accessible for those who want to see them. This feature will roll out in the next few weeks, according to Twitter.
It remains to be seen just how far these new measures will go toward combatting online abuse, but they should nonetheless bring Twitter one step closer to a cleaner and safer environment. Twitter will keep working on additional measures to counter harassment, and the latest move marks an important step forward.
