Twitter claims it has taken some big steps to curb the growing abuse and trolling problem on its network. The rampant nature of the issue can be gathered from the fact that the company received five times more abuse reports than it did six months ago. However, to bring down the number of such incidents, the company has tripled the number of employees who review them within six months, Twitter says.
Twitter committed to tackling the issue
On Thursday, Twitter said it will introduce new procedures to deal with the rule breakers, but apart from the outline, nothing much has been discussed in detail. In an official blog post, the company mentioned that new actions will be not be noticed by the vast majority of “rule-abiding Twitter users, but they give us new options for acting against the accounts that don’t follow the rules, and serve to discourage behavior that goes against our policies.”
The new revelation of the actions against trolls follows an internal memo from Twitter’s CEO in which he acknowledged the failure of the company in tackling the issue. CEO Dick Costolo expressed his concern about the growing abuse problem on Twitter and showed his commitment to take steps and make things better.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Costolo said in the memo. Taking full responsibility for the issue, Costolo said there is no excuse for it and he is was ready to take the full responsibility for failing to address the issue so far.
Tracking phone numbers?
Separately, The Verge reported that the micro-blogging company will start tracking the phone numbers of users who keep on harassing others.
In December, Twitter took the initiative to make it simpler for users to report abuse. The company shortened the reporting process and came up with a “blocked accounts” page to help users identify people they do not wish to see on their account.
In an example showing the extent of abuse on Twitter, feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian posted a screenshot of her Twitter page showing the 157 abusive tweets she received in just one week. The offensive slang appears 31 times in the message along with mentions of threats including rape and violence.
