Twitter Tries To Limit Trolls By Introducing Two New Simple Settings

The microblogging platform Twitter is one of the most popular social networking service. It has been for some times, the network where people are fascinated with its real-time engagement and the ability to find trending things around the globe.

Users can instantly tweet to high-profile figures in politics, business, brands, campaigners and more. The speed that news and information come and spread in the platform is astonishing, and essentially made Twitter a favorite by many people.

Twitter lives and thrives with its simplicity, however, this is also its main weakness.

Twitter, unlike other social networks out there, are more prone to spams and "parasites". They're all over Twitter, sending hoaxes and do that mass follow and unfollow. On August 18th, 2016, Twitter wants to bulk up its quality control to put a limit to those trolls .

The company is introducing two new features that are rolling out in a few days after its announcement.

The first feature is a tweak to the Notification Settings. This will change how end-users see and receive their notifications. With it, users are able to change their settings so they can only receive notifications from followers. This method should quiet those trolls that interact with users' tweets.

Twitter is also making managing notifications settings easier by making it accessible from the notifications tab.

The second big change is what Twitter call a "Quality Filter." When it is toggled, Twitter says that users shouldn't see some of the spammy-type posts that they usually see. This include duplicate posts or automated contents. Twitter added that this feature won't affect accounts that are their followers.

Twitter began testing the feature in 2015. Using algorithms, the filter "can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior."

Twitter is a favorite to many people. When Facebook is becoming more sophisticated and complicated, Twitter is still embracing simplicity at its core. New features introduced don't add much to Twitter's bulk, but are more focused in improvising the bits where the company has overlooked.

As the company is struggling to get more user engagement, having a way to make sure that users can control their notification is a good step in the right direction. Trolls on Twitter, and anywhere on the web, can ruin experience, so Twitter's move to limit their spread is certainly a good one indeed.

But there are still some drawbacks. Twitter is a home to a lot of bots (automation tools). They're created by various scripts that use Twitter's API to mass follow and unfollow other accounts. Those trolls and parasites are becoming so good at their job that they typically wait for days or even weeks after mass following people, before mass unfollowing them. They can appear less bogus, and don't look much like spammers.

This practice is a common thing on Twitter, and many users are still unaware of their existence. They tend to target new Twitter users who are still inexperienced, or newly verified accounts hoping them to follow back.

Looking at the bigger picture, the entire Twitter community are literally the targets. And the spammy and fraudulent action are increasing all the time.

Twitter knows much about this, more than anyone in fact. It also has measures to deal with aggressive following and unfollowing. For example, Twitter has limits on the number of accounts a user can follow/unfollow every hour, before it restricts the account from continuing the action. The measure also applies to third-party tools using its API. But still, their number is increasing and there is no available method to stop them yet.

The new features introduced won't eliminate them for sure. But they can limit their reach.