In a step to ensure safety and reduce the amount of harassment and abuse on its network, Twitter is rolling out some changes to its services. The social media behemoth announced this morning that they will cease creation of new abusive accounts, introduce safer search results, and collapse conceivably abusive or low-quality tweets. The platform believes in freedom of expression and any influence which hampers this right of the people, shall be prohibited.
In a tweet last week, the Jack Dorsey led company said that safety on their platform was their primary concern and they would soon address this issue very seriously — and today they are out with some new announcements.
It has been observed that the users with abusive Twitter accounts return time and again with a different user name, and all they do is stifle and harass regular users on the platform instead of adding value to the community. Twitter says that it is working on identifying those permanently suspended accounts whose sole purpose is abusing and harassing other users, and prevent them from creating other accounts on the platform. This will efficiently slaughter online trolling and ensure safety on the service. The abusers who keep coming back will face a permanent ban, and not some temporary vexation.
The company is also introducing “safe search” which removes Tweets containing potentially sensitive contents and those from blocked and muted users. These contents however, will not be deleted from Twitter, but users can control what they see while using the platform.
The platform will also be “Collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets”, which will make following long conversation threads more productive and relevant. However, these contents, again, will not be deleted from Twitter, and users may control viewing options in settings. So it can be concluded that Twitter is projecting itself as a quality filter here, pushing relevant information and hiding irrelevant and obscene ones.
These changes will be slowly and steadily pushed out over the course of the day — or the week, more probably. Twitter also hints that some more similar updates may be on their way stating that, “some changes will be visible and some less so.”
