The social website continues its battle against trolls

Apr 22, 2015 06:55 GMT  ·  By

Another day, another change on the social networking site. Although it might not seem like much, it's still a step forward in the battle against trolls.

After Vijaya Gadde, general counsel for Twitter, wrote an article for The Washington Post in which she openly admitted that they are having difficulties solving the online abuse issue on the microblogging site, people were a bit shocked by the confession.

To reassure users that they are, however, working on making the platform safer, Twitter has been releasing a series of official announcements letting everyone know about even the smallest changes that they have undergone to achieve that purpose.

In the latest one, Twitter announces that they have updated their violent threats policy, so that now the “prohibition is not limited to direct, specific threats of violence against others but now extends to threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others.”

It seems that they are trying to give users a clearer perspective on their regulations so that they can understand them better, not leaving room for misinterpretations.

Even more changes are on their way

Twitter also introduced another seemingly effective weapon against trolls, as they now have the power to temporarily lock the accounts of certain users in which they will ask them to verify their phone numbers, making sure that the account does indeed belong to the person who sent the tweets, and even ask that person to delete a tweet that has been reported as abusive.

Furthermore, Twitter announced that they were also experimenting with a new feature that could identify abusive tweets and help them spot trolls faster.

And last but not least, the social website revealed once again that they did not plan on stopping there and that they would continue to update users on the measures they were taking to prevent further abuse from taking place on the platform.