The rumor arose a few months ago that Twitter was working on a plan to say sayonara to its trolls and people who used the social media platform for abusive messages. Now, the microblogging social media platform has come out with its new arsenal, and has announced the latest Twitter update.
The official blog states:
Today, we’re announcing three changes: stopping the creation of new abusive accounts, bringing forward safer search results, and collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets.
The statement announced that Twitter will be cracking down upon abusers and rolling out a filter that will act to hide abusive tweets from other readers. This, according to official Twitter sources, is only the first step to make twitter a much friendlier social media platform to be socializing on.
In the next step of the same plan, habitual trolls and people who are used to using the platform for abusive tweets and activities will have their accounts deleted. Apart from this, they will be unable to make new accounts on the website as well.
Right now, Twitter has refrained from saying exactly how the aforementioned tools will be working to make the website a safer and friendlier experience for everyone involved. It is being feared that if the mechanics are revealed, trolls might start working a way around the filter to avoid being caught.
The filter is a great need of the hour given the rise in the platform’s repute as a news source and subsequent increase in troll count on the social media platform in the recent years.
Apart from these, a safe search option will also be included in the website. This tool will enable users to filter out content they don’t want to see, such as sexually explicit content or content containing trigger words, tweets containing abuse in images and videos, etc.
Earlier, Twitter tested out a similar version of the filter tool by helping users ‘see less relevant tweets and replies’ in a thread and by helping them block a certain keyword from their searches. This doesn’t mean that the tweets stop existing, you can still see them if you remove your filters but you won’t be bombarded with any triggering tweets as soon as you open your newsfeed.
The changes will start rolling on both the app and the website within a week’s time.
Photo: Damien Meyer, AFP/Getty Images
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