Twitter Announces New Anti-Harassment Measures

As promised, Twitter has detailed some new measures its implementing to combat the troll problem it has. Twitter's struggle against online harassment has been well documented, and it's been said that those same struggles have prevented the social media company from finding a buyer. These features are rolling out today, with Twitter planning to make them more comprehensive as time goes on.Twitter's strategy is three-pronged. First, it's expanding the mute feature to cover notifications as well. Twitter says that you'll will be able to mute "keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations," that you don't want to receive notifications for.

On top of that, Twitter's report function is getting a little more fleshed out. The company says that it's making it easier for users to report content that goes against its Hateful Conduct Policy, though it doesn't go into detail about how the report feature is improving. Still, Twitter claims that this improved report function will allow it to better process the reports that come in.

Finally, the last change Twitter is making is actually on the back-end. The company has retrained the support teams tasked with handling these reports, and that training includes "special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct." Along with bolstering the systems these support teams use to respond to reports, Twitter also says that it will be offering its teams refresher courses so they can make better calls about what qualifies as harassment and what doesn't.

While these measures may be a step in the right direction, even Twitter admits that they aren't going to solve the problem of harassment immediately. The company reassures that it will focus on "rapidly improving" the platform based on what it learns from these new features. Perhaps that means Twitter will begin watching for patterns and eventually take a more hard line approach to dealing with trolls? We shall see.

SOURCE: Twitter