14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter's decision to properly start fighting against online abuse has kicked off by setting down some new ground rules. On top of making abusive accounts invisible to people who don't follow them, Twitter decided that users would no longer be notified of replies to conversations started by people they have blocked or set to mute.
According to the latest update of the platform, users will only receive notifications in threads where people they've blocked or muted mention them if they are also @mentioned by people they personally follow.
"We've heard consistent feedback from the safety community regarding notifications from conversations started by people you’ve blocked/muted," reads one tweet sent by the Twitter Safety account. "Now, you won't be notified about replies to conversations started by people you've blocked/muted, unless replies are from people you follow."
A platform on a mission
Over the past several weeks, Twitter has demonstrated that it wants to keep its word that the platform will be friendlier and will be home to less abuse. The first thing it has done was to actually start taking into account the complaints about the abuse freely happening on its platform.
Now, it filters out offensive replies to tweets, makes abusive accounts invisible, and has been issuing "time-outs" to accounts they noticed to be infringing on their rules.
Many are commenting that from a pillar of hope for freedom of expression, Twitter has turned into quite the opposite. Others, however, are quite happy with the way things are turning because rampant abuse has no room in this world and users should not be subject to it. With freedom of speech comes a responsibility to express yourself in ways that don't abuse or offend other people. It's one thing to say what's on your mind, but to harass others is a completely different situation.