Twitter Will Now Filter Abusive Replies

Twitter acknowledged last week that it hadn’t done enough to tackle the abuse problem on its platform and promised to put forward a “completely new approach to abuse on Twitter.” It’s rolling out new steps today in order to curb visible abuse on the micro-blogging network. The company will now start filtering abusive replies out of the time for users and has also introduced new steps that will prevent banned users from surfacing on Twitter once again by making new accounts.

Twitter is promising safer search results which remove tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and tweets from blocked and muted accounts. This type of content will be discoverable if users want to see it but it will no longer clutter search results.

Twitter says that its team has been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so that only the most relevant conversations are brought forward. Again, these replies will be accessible to those who want to see them but they will have to go seek them out manually. Twitter says this filtering of abusive tweets out of timelines will roll out in the coming weeks.

It promises to roll out additional product changes in the days and weeks ahead. Some changes will be less visible than others but all of them are focused on ensuring that the abuse problem is tackled for good this time.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Twitter