Microblog social networking website Twitter has announced that they will be taking additional measures to ensure that their users won't have to deal with abusive tweets and accounts that are created specifically to harass Twitter users. This is the next step Twitter is going to take after starting on this course back in November of 2016.
Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus. We stand for freedom of expression and people being able to see all sides of any topic. That’s put in jeopardy when abuse and harassment stifle and silence those voices. We won’t tolerate it and we’re launching new efforts to stop it.It is Twitter's plan to give their users more ways to filter out undesired content. Recently, the popular social network implemented improvements to their report feature that allow users to report users who they feel is against the company's community guidelines.
Their next phase is comprised of three goals: taking steps to identify new accounts made by people who've had their previous accounts suspended, focusing on accounts that are only used to harass other users. The next step is the implementation of "safe" search results, which removes all tweets that potentially contain "sensitive" content like tweets from accounts that you either muted or blocked. The third and final phase is the collapsing of "abusive" and "low-quality" replies to tweets. These tweets won't disappear from the service, you just won't find them unless you're specifically looking for them.
There are up and downsides to this plan. One of the upsides is the decreased exposure of the user to potentially harmful content, making using the service a more pleasurable experience for the end user. On the other hand, this new plan could be interpreted as Twitter hamstringing exchanges about controversial topics or events, making it easy to censor opinions that go against the grain.
Twitter will be rolling out these changes (as well as some other ones) in the coming days and weeks.
What do you think of Twitter's new policy regarding potentially harmful tweets? Let us know in the comment section down below!
