Twitter Announcement: Twitter’s Anti-Abuse Filter Now In Place; Aims to Deter Harassment on Social Media

The micro-blogging giant Twitter recently added an anti-harassment and anti-abuse filter. This is one feature which has been on many users' wish lists. Among the big social media websites, Twitter has been lagging behind in implementing this feature which is meant to protect its members.

Twitter has a mute filter which silences any conversation based on specific keywords. The new feature has the ability to filter out whole conversations from its 215 million active users per month. Alternatively, Twitter's anti-abuse filter can only be to stop notifications from the muted thread. The thread, however, remains on the user's timeline. However, Twitter's anti-abuse filter only works if the thread specifically mentions the user by account name or handle.

Twitter's anti-abuse filter has been criticized, though, because hateful messages will only be hidden from the user, but not completely erased. This does not seem to be enough and does not stop abusive behavior on the micro-blogging site, observers noted.

Additionally, Twitter promises additional features that lean towards protecting the users from bullying and harassment online. One such example is a feature that will allow the user to report abusive or rude users on their thread. The reporting option asks if the tweet was "abusive or harmful," at which an option will appear for "directing hate against a race, religion, gender, or orientation," reports said.

After Twitter's anti-abuse filter, the company said it will also have internal programs for its support personnel. They will have "special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct." Refresher programs are also in store for the support personnel to track how hate speech and abuse grow or change within Twitter. This is necessary to counteract troll's use of hateful code language which are meant to circumvent the use of Twitter's anti-abuse filter.