Twitter is rolling out three new features to tackle abusive content on their platform. For Twitter, online harassment has long been criticized and finally, they have taken it seriously.
In an announcement on Tuesday, February 7, 2017, Ed Ho, VP of Engineering addresses on Twitter Blogs, “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. 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.”
Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
Jack Dorsey, co-founder, and CEO of Twitter tweeted that they’re taking a completely new approach to abuse on Twitter. There is no clear information on how these new features work to tackle the abusive content. I believe they’re working on some kind of Artificial intelligence which can tackle all the abusive content on Twitter automatically.
We're taking a completely new approach to abuse on Twitter. Including having a more open & real-time dialogue about it every step of the way https://t.co/a1SV7URPEK
— jack (@jack) January 31, 2017
Here are the new features Twitter is rolling out,
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Abusive Accounts
Twitter will now prevent users who have “previously been banned” from coming back onto the platform under a new username.
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Safer Search Results
Twitter will implement “a safe search filter”, turned on by default. Both potentially sensitive tweets and tweets from blocked or muted accounts will be hidden from search results.
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Abusive or Low-quality Tweets
Twitter will collapse “abusive and low-quality” replies so they don’t take up space deserved by less sucky tweets.
These features are already started rolling out all over the world, and the new features might add in the future to fight the online harassment.
Sudheer Kiran is a digital marketing consultant & co-founder of the digital marketing agency DigitalVow that offers digital marketing services to small and medium-sized enterprises. He is passionate on covering topics like marketing, startups and entrepreneurship.
