Twitter is finally living up to its earlier promises to tackle anonymous accounts that send annoying messages. This is how the new Twitter filter works that silences these accounts.
Twitter filter update tackles anonymous hate accounts
Twitter is rolling out a number of new features this week. These should not only allow you to report nasty accounts, but should also go above and beyond to block hateful messages before they reach you.
The social network relies on artificial intelligence for this. Using algorithms, accounts with few followers quickly fall through the basket, especially if they continue to send tweets specifically to a handful of accounts. If a user is discovered in this way, Twitter will temporarily only show the tweets to the followers of the account. This prevents such hateful messages from reaching a wider audience.
In addition, new filter options are also added. With this you can easily block the accounts that have the highest chance of nasty comments: users with a default ‘egg’ as an avatar, or people who have not yet verified their email or phone number. You do this as follows:
This is how you use the new Twitter filters:
- Open Twitter and choose the Notifications tab
- Tap the gear in the top left corner of the screen
- Choose advanced filters
- Tap the filters you want to apply to your timeline
To show that Twitter takes reports of online harassment seriously, the company will also communicate better about this. If you indicate an account from now on, you will receive an email, as well as when Twitter takes steps in response to your message. Finally, Twitter makes it possible to silence users for a period of time. Handy if someone keeps bothering you with the same question, but also if you follow someone who fills your timeline with tweets about a topic that doesn’t interest you.
Twitter says the features will be available to everyone during the week. This is badly needed, because Twitter is known for the large number of trolls who have an anonymous job to threaten or berate people.
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