To combat the rise of online harassment and bullying on its service, Twitter is rolling out new blocking tools for its users. The new set of tools is designed to allow users to mute or silence notifications from accounts that abuse them on the social network. You’ll be able to find the new tools in your Notifications Settings where you’ll be able to mute notifications from profiles that meet certain conditions. Notifications from people you don’t follow, for example, can be silenced. If you wish, you can also mute posts or replies from “Twitter eggs,” or new profiles that use the default Twitter egg photo. Additionally, Twitter’s new tool can also be used to silence notifications from users who haven’t confirmed their email address or telephone number. The newly announced tools will have the biggest effect on temporary accounts and Twitter bots. The social media company is hoping that giving users the ability to mute messages will discourage people from creating temporary Twitter accounts for the purpose of harassing others.
Twitter’s latest announcement follows the company’s decision to combat online abuse and harassment in a more aggressive manner. Previous related features the company introduces included the option to mute certain keywords, usernames, and phrases. The tools announced today extend Twitter’s efforts to fight harassment, but they still won’t be able to mute notifications from verified Twitter accounts. However, you can employ Twitter’s previously released tools to silence specific usernames to fight harassment from verified accounts.
As a part of its fight against online abuse, Twitter also created the Twitter Trust & Safety Council a year ago, though it’s unclear if the deployment of its latest tool is the result of the work of that council. Earlier this month, Twitter also announced tools and algorithms that can identify patterns of harmful tweets. When Twitter identifies those tweets, it can make them invisible to all Twitter users except for the followers of their author. Twitter has approximately 319 million active monthly users and it is keen on limiting the reach of spam, harmful tweets, and harassment to drive engagement and keep its community safe.