Trolls Beware: Twitter Unveils Measures To Fight Abuse On Its Site

Abuse on Twitter is not something new and in fact we see it all over the place these days but the microblogging site says it’s now going to fight the menace head on.

They unveiled three steps they are taking to fight abuse on the site namely;

• Keeping banned users banned even if they try to rejoin using other details. We don’t know how they intend to do this or if they have a special software/team dedicated to carrying this out. It could very well be a combination of human and artificial intelligence tools like what’s obtainable on Facebook.
• They are introducing safe search which removes tweets with offensive and inappropriate words and images but users will have control over this feature by turning it on and off.
• Twitter will stop showing abusive and low-quality replies so that users can’t see them in conversation threads. You will see a “show less relevant replies” button and again if you choose to see all replies, they will be available to you. Using artificial intelligence technology, Twitter will be able to hide certain replies from its users.

This should be a relief o many users who fear Twitter is doing little to combat abuse on its site. They had to shut down the account of an “alt-right” user who had racially abused comedienne Lesley Jones on Twitter only after she threatened to take down her account.  

Twitter has been trying to sell itself for some time now but since there’s really no serious buyer at hand now, they have decided to go it all alone but one of the reasons no one eventually made a bid according to a report could be Twitter’s history of abuse. This could have put off buyers like Walt Disney which is largely known for its family based shows.

In any case, how Twitter implements the new measures might say something about the character of the company to investors.