Twitter Gets Serious, Company Unveils New Block List Feature To Help Fight Trolls And Bullies
Trolls will never go away as long as there are close-minded people who have way too much time on their hands. Luckily, Twitter has found one solution to address this problem.
The company has previously acknowledged that they weren’t able to adequately protect their users from abusive tweets or from being targeted by malicious groups and individuals.
In a memo sent to employees, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that “we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.”
So after years of sucking at their job, the company has finally decided to take action.
Twitter is letting you and your friends join hands to block trolls and miscreants http://t.co/h9QZc1nTU5 pic.twitter.com/4klTZ86a4f
— The Verge (@verge) June 10, 2015
Twitter already has mute and block functions, but according to the company’s User Safety engineer Xiaoyun Zhang, Twitter knows that “some users – those who experience high volumes of unwanted interactions on Twitter- need more sophisticated tools.”
“We also hope these advanced blocking tools will prove useful to the developer community to further improve users’ experience,” he added.
With this new feature, Twitter users can build a list of trolls or accounts they want to block (or have blocked), export and share the list with other users.
In theory, it will help Twitter users who’re also being harassed by the same groups.
It’s been a well-documented fact that numerous Twitter uses are being harassed and bombarded with abusive tweets by certain groups or by multiple accounts. The unwanted interaction has made Twitter a very negative place for a lot of people.
The new block list feature is specifically designed to address these situations. Individuals sharing their blocked lists can help others block those said accounts en masse and prevent unwarranted attention.
You can now share Twitter block lists because people are horrible http://t.co/jzEh6EyJrC pic.twitter.com/E1Pca0ZnpF
— Engadget (@engadget) June 10, 2015
To start off, users should go to their Twitter page and mouse over to the Blocked Accounts feature and create a list of accounts they want to block. To import and export a block list, click on the Advanced options drop-down menu and click on the action one wants to take (Export your list/ Import a list).
Before this new block list feature, Twitter users had to rely on third-party apps like BlockTogether and GGAutoblocker for protection against trolls.
Twitter has shown that it’s serious about improving their service and protecting its users.
The company launched the blocked accounts settings page last December and also improved the rules so that blocked accounts can no longer view the profile or tweets of the user who initiated the block.
Twitter also announced its updated policy and the enforcement changes it will place in April. The improved policy now stated that tweets that include “threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others” will be banned.
It’s good to see that Twitter is doing what it can so users can feel safer and have the assurance that they now have added protection against trolls and malicious tweets.
[Image credit: wired.com]
