No one likes to be abused, so is internet users and Twitter itself. The microblogging platform is taking some steps to limit trolls and abusive contents to ever show up on people's feed.
Twitter has introduced three updates to its platform. The first is to prevent users who have been previously banned from coming back to Twitter even when using a new username. The second is by implementing a safe search filter, and the third is by collapsing "abusive and low-quality" replies so they don't take up space
To make this happen, Twitter is leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to pick up low-quality contents and red flags. So for example if a tweet is getting nasty responses from newly created accounts that don't follow the tweeting user, Twitter will hide them from the conversation.
With this feature, tweeting at non-followers without solicitation or "engaging in patterns of abusive behavior," Twitter will make the tweets visible only to followers. What this means, trolls can still harass or abuse others, but their tweets won't show to the intended audience, keeping them from expanding their reach or bother others.
Twitter is allowing users to filter out posts from accounts without a profile picture, unverified emails or phone numbers. So for those that are harassed or abused by those dreaded accounts with egg profile pictures, Twitter wants to put an end to them.
And to make things easier for users, Twitter is also trying to be more open about the reporting process. With the updates in place, users will receive a notification when Twitter receives a report and when it takes an action against an abusing user.
This is a step up from its previous attempt where Twitter only informs users via email.
One thing that comes in mind is that AI is still far from perfect. Twitter in using AI to identify user behavior has a risk of incorrectly categorizing tweets and accounts as offensive. The nature and how people interact on Twitter can be particularly difficult for AI to learn.
It needs to understand the balance between free speech and abuse.
But Twitter's updates are certainly better than what it had before. With Twitter having more than plenty of tweets for its AI to learn, users can expect its algorithms to become smarter with time. But meanwhile, Twitter needs to make sure than all the updates are well implemented and people are informed about the new tools so abusing can be minimized before they happen.