Twitter has announced a new stage in the fightback against online trolling, which will see major changes rolled out in a matter of weeks.
The social network said that it will enhance the “mute” and “block” features, as well as cracking down on “repeat offenders” who get banned then make new accounts.
Changes were announced on the platform by a Twitter executive, and were later backed up by CEO Jack Dorsey.
Ed Ho, the site’s vice-president of engineering, posted a string of messages promising change on Tuesday morning. He said:
Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever. We heard you, we didn’t move fast enough last year; now we’re thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months.
We’ll be rolling out a number of product changes in the days ahead. Some changes will be visible and some will be less so.
We’ll listen, learn and keep shipping until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel.
This week, we’ll tackle long overdue fixes to mute/block and stopping repeat offenders from creating new accounts.
As we we roll out these changes, and other features that are new, we’ll keep you updated. We want your feedback and we are listening.
Some sites and commentators have complained that the new measures could amount to additional censorship on the platform – which has seen some users abandon the platform for pro-free speech alternatives.
However, the measures Ho outlines appear to be focused around giving people better options to control what they read themselves.
Angry egg people and Pepe trolls will still be – broadly – able to say what they want, and anyone who wants to read it can do that too. It’ll just be easier to ignore them.
