Twitter Plans to Hide Abusive Tweets and Block Repeat Offenders

Twitter Plans to Hide Abusive Tweets and Block Repeat Offenders

Twitter says it has come up with new ways to make abusive tweeters less effective: hiding their content and preventing banned users from creating new accounts, according to Bloomberg. The updates, detailed in a blog post, come after years of criticism that the company hasn’t done enough to combat abuse and harassment.

It’s part of a new push under CEO Jack Dorsey to clean up the social media service. The changes will make it harder for abusers to be heard because they’ll be hidden in search results and replies, possibly decreasing their motivation. Twitter won’t immediately delete the content that’s deemed harmful, it will just require more clicks to get to it. By preventing permanently blocked accounts from resurfacing under a different name, Twitter may curb the number of users who create multiple log-ins just to attack others.

Twitter’s failure to curb harassment has been a main complaint of users, and was one reason the company failed to get a bid from potential acquirers, including Walt Disney, when it was exploring a sale last year. When Dorsey became CEO in 2015, he named user safety one of his top priorities. The prior CEO, Dick Costolo, said last week at a conference that he regrets not solving the problem during his tenure. After several quarters of stagnant user growth, Twitter’s taking concrete steps to make its product more pleasant to use.

Several prominent people have been banned from the service, including  Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial British writer at the conservative website Breitbart News. Known as @nero, Yiannopoulos was excluded for leading harassment of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. Martin Shkreli, the brash former pharmaceutical executive, was suspended earlier this year after he harassed a female reporter online. But the more common trolls are those who hide behind anonymous user names and create new accounts whenever they’re blocked.