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Twitter is to allow users to “mute” words and phrases for the first time as part of a series of changes aimed at improving how the social site deals with abuse.
Though some third-party Twitter services already support the muting of keywords, users of the official app or website will now be able to hide keywords, phrases and entire conversations from their notifications – expanding on existing features that enable Twitter users to hide entire accounts from their timeline.
The social media site also announced a “more direct” way of reporting abusive content, which will show users a range of options to choose from that specify how and why they think content is offensive.
Twitter says this will enable them to better process and respond to such incidents.
“The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we’ve seen across the internet has risen sharply over the past few years,” the firm said in a statement.
“These behaviours inhibit people from participating on Twitter, or anywhere.
“Abusive conduct removes the chance to see and share all perspectives around an issue, which we believe is critical to moving us all forward. In the worst cases, this type of conduct threatens human dignity, which we should all stand together to protect.”
The social platform has been heavily criticised for its inability to control abusive behaviour on the site, something chief executive Jack Dorsey has said the service must get better at.
“Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, we’ve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct,” Twitter said.
“We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve.
“There are three areas we’re focused on, and happy to announce progress around today: controls, reporting, and enforcement.”
In terms of enforcement, Twitter says it has retrained all of its support teams on the site’s policies.
“We’ve also improved our internal tools and systems in order to deal more effectively with this conduct when it’s reported to us. Our goal is a faster and more transparent process,” the social network said.
“We don’t expect these announcements to suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. No single action by us would do that.
“Instead, we commit to rapidly improving Twitter based on everything we observe and learn.”
