Twitter will roll out updates to tackle online harassment

For Twitter, which has long been criticised as a hotbed for online harassment, the updates are expected to bring down the number of such cases.

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For Twitter, which has long been criticised as a hotbed for online harassment, the updates are expected to bring down the number of such cases.

Twitter is preparing to roll out updates that will make the platform a safer place. In a series of tweets, Twitter’s Ed Ho indicated the company is moving with more urgency than ever and thinking about progress in ‘days and hours not week and months’. He said Twitter didn’t move fast enough last year, but making the site a safer place is now its primary focus.

“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,” Ho’s tweet reads. Twitter’s focus this week is to roll out fixes to mute/block and stop repeat offenders from creating accounts. “We’ll listen, learn and keep shipping until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel,” he adds.

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In a statement to VentureBeat, a company spokesperson said, “We’re approaching safety with a sense of urgency. As such, we will be rolling out a number of product changes in the coming days and weeks — some will be immediately visible, while others will be more targeted to specific scenarios. We will update you along the way and continue to test, learn, and iterate on these changes to evaluate their effectiveness. You can expect to see meaningful progress in this area.”

Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever.

— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017

For Twitter, which has long been criticised as a hotbed for online harassment, the updates are expected to bring down the number of such cases. In order to tackle online abuse, Twitter rolled out its mute features for notifications and introduced a more direct way to report abuse.

However, the company notes the announcements won’t suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. “No single action by us would do that. Instead we commit to rapidly improving Twitter based on everything we observe and learn,” Twitter said in a blogpost.

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