Twitter adopts anti-abuse measures to tackle violent threats and abuse

 Twitter has announced some alterations in product and policy in order to tackle violent threats and abuse on its platform.

In a blogpost, Twitter has affirmed to adopt anti-abuse measures. It involves the implementation of new technology that enables to identify and limit the reach of abusive tweets. It also includes renewed violent threat policy that allows Twitter to lockdown the accounts belonging to suspects of cyberbullying.

Shreyas Doshi, Twitter director of product management, admits in a blog post that the company's previous policy was "unduly narrow" and allowed for certain kinds of threatening behavior to go unchecked. Twitter is giving authority to its enforcement team, to lock abusive accounts for a specified period of time. This interlude is designed to force abusers to delete tweets that violate the abuse terms. However, it also allows Twitter to require a user's phone number to reinstate their account.

Twitter is also trying an advanced feature that will enable the enforcement team to identify abusive tweets and "limit their reach" on the platform. The tool will use "signals and context" that indicate abuse and the similarity between a tweet and other content that was previously deemed abusive.

Particularly, to cut abusive trolls off at the moment of tweeting, rather than after targeted abuse has hit home and caused the intended distress. This is a significant step for a company that has been optimistic in pronouncing the ‘tweets must flow’ in the past.

 In February CEO Dick Costolo admitted that Twitter sucked "at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform." 

The twitter’s ultimate goal is to s to ensure that it is a safe place for the widest possible range of perspectives and they will continue to evaluate and update their approach in this critical arena.

“While dedicating more resources toward better responding to abuse reports is necessary and even critical, an equally important priority for us is identifying and limiting the incentives that enable and even encourage some users to engage in abuse,” according to Doshi.