14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is finally taking the much-desired steps to fight against the troll problem it’s been having, and it is introducing three new changes.
The social network is planning to take on repeat abusers who make new accounts to continue trolling people who have blocked them, the company said in a blog post. This has been a massive problem for Twitter, and one of the main reasons why it can never really say how many users it actually has – the “egg” accounts are everywhere.
The company promised to address harassment across the platform years ago. About two years ago, it said that it would start asking users suspended for abusive behavior for their phone number in order to reinstate their accounts since a new phone number is a lot harder to get than a new email address. This time around, Twitter isn’t explaining exactly how this troll crack-down will take place, but it’s probably something along these lines.
Then, Twitter is also introducing new, safer, search results. This feature removes tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and tweets from blocked and muted accounts from search results. The content can still be discoverable if you want to find it, but it won’t clutter the feed any longer.
Keep up the quality levels
The last feature introduced today enables users to hide potentially abusive or low-quality tweets. “Our team has also been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies, so the most relevant conversations are brought forward. These Tweet replies will still be accessible to those who seek them out,” the blog post reads.
The product changes are to roll out in the weeks to come, and some features will be more visible than others.
Twitter is one of the social platforms where freedom of expression is greatly valued. Some, however, have taken advantage of this freedom, which makes Twitter’s changes all the more welcome. We’re all curious to see just how things will change in the weeks to come.