Through a post on its official blog, Twitter revealed that it has further updated the website's user safety features to reduce trolling and other rule-breaking actions.
Twitter, which recently streamlined how users reported harassment on the website, has made similar updates on the process of reporting other issues such as self-harm, impersonation and the propagation of confidential and private information.
According to the blog post, the changes have started rolling out, with the updates expected to reach all Twitter users within the coming weeks.
Over the past half year, Twitter said that in addition to the changes that the company made to the website's reporting process, Twitter has also completely changed the way of reviewing user reports regarding abuse. Allowing other Twitter users to report cases of abuse on the website, which can now be done for impersonation and the propagation of private information with the most recent update, merited updates to the reporting process and to significant upgrades in the company's tools and staffing.
Twitter said that, while it has been receiving five times more user reports than it did in the past, it has also tripled the number of employees in the support team that is focused solely on handling reports of abuse. Such investments made by Twitter on its processes and workforce has reportedly allowed Twitter to greatly decrease the average response that it takes for abuse reports down to just a fraction of previous times. Twitter is also expecting more improvements in this metric in the near future.
Twitter also said that it has started adding a host of new enforcement actions that the website's administrators will use against user accounts that violate the website's rules. While the new actions will not be seen by most of the law-abiding users on Twitter, they will provide the website with additional options for punishing accounts that are breaking rules, to discourage such behavior from repeatedly being done by troublesome users.
"The safety of our users is extremely important to us. It's something we continue to work hard to improve. This week's changes are the latest steps in our long-term approach, and we look forward to bringing you additional developments soon," Twitter said.
Leaked internal memos earlier this month revealed comments made by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo that acknowledged the website mishandling certain problems.
"We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day," Costolo said.
