We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve," the company said in a statement. While Twitter has introduced several changes over the last two years (flagging abusive tweets, creating a safety council, introducing a quality filter), this announcement included new tools that had be sought for by users. Those will be matched by a renewed effort from the company to ramp up enforcement of its terms against abuse. Users can access "muted words" under "Settings" in the notifications tab and add hashtags, usernames, emoji and words to a list. New tweets with the selected words will not appear in users' notification tabs on desktop or mobile, as push notifications and in email notifications, but users could still see them in their timelines. That could change in a future update. Another way to further prevent seeing abuse in notifications is to limit notifications to the accounts you choose to follow, which Twitter introduced to the platform in August. For the Twitter user, anyone can report a tweet as "abusive or harmful" and can now select from a handful of options explaining why it is so. For enforcement, Twitter has created new internal tools and has retrained its support teams through a new "rigorous" program, the company said. It also was not just a one-day program.
network.
Twitter is finally doing something about its troll problem.
Twitter announced on Tuesday new features and policy changes as part of a company-wide reset to address safety on the network, introducing a “mute” feature that looks to help users control what they see.
The updates attempt to combat abuse on Twitter, a problem that reached a crescendo during the election season. The issue of abuse on Twitter had built up over years, with a growing body of data showing the severity of the problem.
The issue had pushed some users to abandon the platform, while its business may have also suffered. Bloomberg reported that hateful communication reportedly contributed to Walt Disney’s decision to forgo a bid to buy the company.
Twitter has admitted its inaction and need to change.
“Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, we’ve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct. We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve,” the company said in a statement.
While Twitter has introduced several changes over the last two years (flagging abusive tweets, creating a safety council, introducing a quality filter), this announcement included new tools that had be sought for by users. Those will be matched by a renewed effort from the company to ramp up enforcement of its terms…
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