Twitter Announce Tools to Help Fight Harassment

Reuters

Unfortunately, the name Twitter is now synonymous with harassment. So many people go on there and they get attacked for saying something, for being something or for simply having the wrong name. It's completely unfair and it's something that so many people want to not happen anymore but Twitter doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it. Now Twitter has put two new tools into place that should hopefully help at least a little.

Essentially what Twitter has just introduced is a filter for both quality and whether you see tweets from users you follow or users you don't. If you turn on one setting you make it so you only receive notifications from users you follow. This means that you'll only know if someone you follow tries to contact you. It doesn't mean they can't re-tweet or say nasty things about you but it does mean that you're less likely to see it unless you go looking for it. The other feature is a full-on filter that should stop you from being notified about any spam. This will include duplicate tweets or anything that appears to be automated which could be useful if you tweet a lot. This is supposed to also appear in places other than your Twitter notifications as well so this might stop you from being spammed a little.

Both of these features should work on desktop and mobile Twitter so you don't have to worry about being hounded if you switch between your phone and computer. The only problem could be if your harassers don't behave like spam or they manage to get someone you do follow to say something horrible about you. It's good that Twitter is trying to do something but considering people can make new accounts just to target someone, I'm not sure how much help a filter can be even if it only tells you things that the people you follow say.

Twitter still have a long way to go when it comes to dealing with its abuse problem. We get that it can be difficult to patrol but the fact is that they still need to be trying more than they are. If Twitter has any sense then this must be the first of many steps otherwise people are going to step right back into harassing them to actually deal with this.