Internet trolls are everyone's enemy. The battle against them is everlasting, and people on the web should care.
Trolls work in mysterious ways, making them unpredictable. As a result, they can spam people's notification with offensive replies or usernames. This can certainly annoy people, and legitimate users won't be pleased seeing online haters occupying much of their feed.
With social media at the center of its spread, Twitter that has been fighting them by introducing enhancements to its platform, is rolling out some others to keep those haters under control.
On July 11th, 2017, the microblogging site introducea a feature to mute notifications from new users and those who who aren't followers.
The feature is an improvement to the updates released back in March, where users can simply ignore users they don't follow, those that haven't confirmed their phone or email, and those who still have that egg profile picture.
Now you have even more control over your notifications. Mute accounts that don't follow you, new accounts, and more. https://t.co/UapP6DtTtY pic.twitter.com/RcBQGx219k
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 10, 2017
The ability to mute new users is certainly a welcome addition. This is because people on the web, and on social media in particular, tend to use newly-made accounts so they can harass others without having their original identity known.
And muting those who aren't followers can at least keep users' feed less cluttered.
Users can also filter lower-quality content from notifications such as content that appears to be automated and mute notifications related to certain words and phrases.
Twitter has come a long way to fight spammers and trolls. Harassment, cyberbullying and hate speech are already the unwanted trends - the side-effects of free speech on the web.
The microblogging site itself has struggled to fight them, as once stated by former CEO Dick Costolo. He said that Twitter "suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years."
Since then, the company has added more ways to counter those people's posts with various tools. From AI to identify hateful speech, features to mute specific words, to making users blocking posts more effectively and filing police reports easier.
Twitter has also ban users more than often when it sees fit.
But with Twitter as one of the most prominent (but also struggling) social media, it's tough for it to really deal a massive blow to trolls. Finding the right balance between free speech and policing has always been an issue for social media and the internet in general. But still, Twitter's move is an advancement in the war.