Twitter Going To upgrade features to combat cyber-bullying; to give Twitter users the option to mute
Twitter, Now facing pressure for not doing enough to curb abusive behavior on its platform, said on Tuesday it would upgrade some of the features to better combat cyber-bullying. The company said it would expand the “mute” option it will allow to users to block tweets based on keywords, phrases and the content of conversations from the a user’s notifications. This “mute” option currently allows the users to block tweets from their accounts. Some change will be rolled out to all users in the coming week, Twitter said in their blog post.
Twitter, which has struggled to strike a balance between free expression and blocking violent and abusive hateful speech, has come under increasing criticism following complaints from twitter users that they have been the target of abuse. In July, Twitter permanently banned some particular user accounts for harassment after Ghost busters actor Leslie Jones left the twitter, saying she had faced severe spam and harassment.
Twitter said it would provide “a more direct way” for users to flag abusive content, but didn’t give any details. They also said it had improved in internal controls to deal more effectively with abusive conduct reported by users. This comes after company COO "Adam Brain" decided to leave the Twitter company and CFO Anthony Noto will take his responsibilities.
With inputs from Reuters.
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