The Future

Twitter introduces three major new anti-harassment tools

And yet, still no global Donald Trump filter.

The Future

Twitter introduces three major new anti-harassment tools

And yet, still no global Donald Trump filter.
The Future

Twitter introduces three major new anti-harassment tools

And yet, still no global Donald Trump filter.

In its continuing attempt to make Twitter less of a nightmarish hellscape for people who actively use the social network, the company introduced three significant new features today designed to curb harassment and protect users. This new suite of updates follows a push in November (not surprisingly timed just after the presidential election), which saw an expansion of its “mute” function and an implementation of a “hateful conduct policy.” Here are the highlights from the changes coming today:

  • Twitter will increase efforts to stop the creation of new, abusive accounts. Tired of seeing eggs in your feed, or watching your worst trolls just reappear with a new name? Apparently this will fix the issue. The feature focuses on “accounts that are created only to abuse and harass others.” Will this include Donald Trump’s account? No word on that.

  • The company is also updating search results, giving users a more Google-like “safe search” option. Still want the nasty stuff? Says Twitter, “this type of content will be discoverable if you want to find it, [but] it won’t clutter search results any longer.” No word on how this will impact the visibility of the president’s content in your searches.

  • Perhaps most importantly, Twitter will now collapse “potentially abusive and low-quality replies” to your tweets. Essentially, like downvoted comments on Reddit, the uglier replies will disappear. It’s still unclear how Twitter will make those decisions, and the company continues to remain mum on how much Donald Trump’s replies will continue to be visible to its users. See it in action below.