Today, in a blog post, Twitter announced they will be releasing three new features that will help them in their fight against ‘abusive content’ on their platform. This comes after a few high profile users have been suspended from the platform after racist remarks. Suspended users include: former Business Insider executive, Pax Dickinson, Richard Spencer, of the “alt-right” organization called the National Policy Institute, and British journalist and public speaker, Milo Yiannopoulos, who got permanently banned after he posted tweets that seem to direct racist targeting to the Ghostbustersstar, Leslie Jones.
First, Twitter will continue to keep these banned users from creating new accounts, though they did not explain this process. Creating a new account under a fake name seems to be a work around, so this process is yet to be understood.
Next, Twitter will be able to remove certain content from search results. Twitter says, “we’re also working on ‘safe search’ which removes Tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and Tweets from blocked and muted accounts from search results.” They go on to say that this will help cut back on cluttered search results, but in a way that specific content can still be found if the user wants.
Lastly, the company will start clumping together seemingly abusive replies to other tweets to help lower the amount of negativity on their platform.
Twitter has been getting flack of the banning of users, with outcries of freedom of speech issues, but the company continues to update their services with features in the hopes to help stop the spread of “hate”. This is in addition to their November update that added to the mute and reporting features. Twitter adds, “With every change, we’ll learn, iterate, and continue to move at this speed until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel.”
