Twitter Adds Mute Feature to Notifications to Help Combat Abuse, Bullying and Harassment
Reporting hateful acts have also improved.
Twitter is furthering its efforts to fight different forms of abuse. In a recent statement, the social media platform said, “The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we’ve seen across the Internet has risen sharply over the past few years. These behaviors inhibit people from participating on Twitter, or anywhere. Abusive conduct removes the chance to see and share all perspectives around an issue, which we believe is critical to moving us all forward. In the worst cases, this type of conduct threatens human dignity, which we should all stand together to protect.”
One of the features that promises to combat these types of issues will be a mute option for ‘notifications.’ Muting is already available for accounts you don’t want to see, but now in response to growing requests, users can now also ’mute’ keywords, phrases and entire conversations in this particular segment. In addition, Twitter is happy to announce that they are putting even more focus on controls, reporting and enforcement. Users have a faster way of reporting incidents now too, allowing the platform to process complaints at a much faster and more streamlined rate. As for enforcement, the social media giant also boasts that it has retrained its support teams, on “policies, including special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct, and implemented an ongoing refresher program.”
It’s no secret that the rise in social media use has spawned many cases of hateful acts that target race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease. Twitter is doing its best to respond to these unwanted actions and it will be interesting to see how other social media companies will follow suit.
