Twitter to clamp down on abusive content following persistent criticism

The social media company said it was making it easier for users to report 'hateful conduct' directed at them or others and had retrained its staff to better deal with improper conduct.

Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s vice president for Europe the Middle East and Africa, says ‘Twitter is an open public platform where the vast majority of people have a really positive experience.’ Courtesy Twitter
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Twitter has announced new features to curb abusive content, as the social network seeks to increase advertiser engagement on its platform as a means of boosting profitability.

Twitter today said it was making it easier for users to report “hateful conduct” directed at them or others, had retrained its staff to better deal with improper conduct, and extended the service’s “mute” function to include notifications of selected keywords, phrases and conversations.

“Twitter is an open public platform where the vast majority of people have a really positive experience,” Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s vice president for Europe the Middle East and Africa, said in a telephone interview today.

“Obviously some of the attention goes on the negative experiences, and that’s why we’re foc­using our energies on ensuring that we deal with the negatives so that the positives of an open platform like Twitter can benefit everyone.”

Twitter has faced persistent criticism for not doing enough to curb racist, sexist and religiously motivated abuse on the platform.

Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones abandoned the platform temporarily in July after being inundated with racist and sexist hatred, with a large rise in online abuse in the run-up to this month’s presidential elections.

Twitter’s perceived failure to deal effectively with such abuse cases was reportedly a factor in suitors including Salesforce and Disney declining to submit bids for the company last month.

“There’s no single platform that can say they’ve got everything right,” said Mr Daisley.

“We’ve set up a safety council and worked with a lot of users to try and understand what their big issues are.”

“These battles are never won, but most people who look at our response and the way we deal with [online abuse] say we’ve made more progress in the last six months than we’ve done up to that point.”

jeverington@thenational.ae ​

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