Twitter has long been reputed as slow to act on anonymous "egg account" trolls, harassing users via its network. No more, the news and social network says, announcing it's finally taking steps to do so.
The ease of using the most public-facing social network has similarly led to many malicious people using the service to inflict abuse on others. Stories abound online, and this writer has dealt with bizarre and perverse trolls.
Yet, getting the ears of Twitter has often proven difficult and slow moving.
To its credit, Twitter has routinely implemented new features and declared new policies in an attempt to strike a balance between free speech and user safety. However, these were ultimately no more than deterrents rather than solutions.
{loadposition david08}That changes today. Twitter has announced widespread changes to deal with harassing "egg accounts" – so named because of the default egg-like Twitter profile icon.
These changes begin with an algorithm to detect when an account repeatedly tweets at non-followers or displays other behaviours that indicate abuse is occurring.
Twitter will not outright remove the account (at least, not by automation, without human review) but will progressively limit the reach of those tweets until ultimately it is one person ranting to themselves.
This policy of not banning abusers or spammers but hiding their output is not uncommon and is the same technique employed by Reddit where troublesome users (or bots) are shadow-banned and may happily continue ejaculating pejoratives without anyone else ever being subjected to it.
Additionally, Twitter will allow users to place egg accounts, keywords and select other items on mute for periods ranging from a day to forever.
Twitter also states it will at long last provide progress updates on abuse reports to users, no longer leaving them waiting for any signs of life from the Twitter offices.