Twitter Introduces Three New Features To Tackle Online Harassment

After announcing three new measures to combat hate speech and online abuse on their platform in November, Twitter has introduced three additional features to make the app a safer space for users. The new features include "safe search" results, a change to the Timeline feature to hide abusive tweets, and a policy update to stop users who consistently engage in hate speech from creating new accounts.

Twitter's new "safe search" results will remove tweets that "contain potentially sensitive content and Tweets from blocked and muted accounts," while the new Timeline feature will identify “potentially abusive and low-quality replies” and collapse them. To curb serial harassment, Twitter says it will be identifying "people who have been permanently suspended and stop them from creating new accounts.”

The new changes follow the company's promise to implement its anti-harassment features more promptly last week. In a series of tweets, vice president Ed Ho acknowledged that the company "didn't move fast enough last year; now we're thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months." He continued, "We’ll listen, learn and keep shipping until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel."