Twitter further combats harassment through 'quality filter'

Scorpus

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Twitter's CEO has admitted that the service has a problem with abuse and harassment, vowing to combat trolls "left and right" through a variety of methods. So far the company has made it a lot easier to report abusive members, while making it a lot harder for users to anonymously sign up through services like Tor.

But the company's latest tool to combat harassment could be a lot more effective. As seen in the iOS app by tech entrepreneur Anil Dash, Twitter has quietly rolled out a tool called the "quality filter", which aims to remove all tweets from a user's notifications timeline that it deems to contain "threats, offensive or abusive language", or that have been sent by suspicious accounts.

So far the quality filter is only available to users who have been verified, and there's no word on when (or if) it will become available to regular users. Twitter also didn't disclose how exactly it determines content to be offensive or abusive, other than saying it uses filters similar to the "tailored" notification option that it replaces.

It appears that the filter can only be enabled through the iOS app at this stage, leaving out users of the web app or other mobile platforms. However it's a definite step in the right direction, because if abusive content is blocked from the view of users, it helps create a more friendly environment for everyone who users the service.

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Because they only care about "verified" users feels...

Better to listen to those, with likely a larger following than the average person. They tend to be the target of a lot more of this, and to test things it's easier on a smaller scale. Not going to say just nobody else is a target, but it would be harder to filter useful vs useless information on a wide scale.
 
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