Twitter Aims to Stop Anonymous Abuse

The social media company announced changes today that will stop abuse among users.

Twitter has just announced a change in policy that will stop some of the abuse and anonymous accounts that send hate and threats to other accounts. Twitter has updated its policy pertaining to violent threats to include “promot[ing] violence against others.” Previously, the policy banned tweets that were limited to “direct, specific threats of violence against others,” the company said in a statement. They admitted that they have not been as good at stopping abuse in the past.

They will hire more people to stop abusive accounts, and will go out of their way to delete any abusive tweets. They also said that the suspension of any accounts that are abusive will also last longer than they did before. However, the company also has to walk the line and allow for freedom of speech on the social network. 

One of the most famous cases of abuse stems from the death of Robin Williams. The verbal barrage against his daughter after the actor committed suicide led to her deleting her account and leaving the website. 

A few months ago, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo talked about the company’s struggles in a leaked memo: We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Costolo wrote. “It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”

Still, it will be difficult as an estimated 500 million tweets are sent each and every day. 

Twitter director of product management Shreyas Doshi has hope for these changes, though some are worrying that it will take away from the nature of the social media website.

“We’ll be monitoring how these changes discourage abuse and how they help ensure the overall health of a platform that encourages everyone’s participation,” Doshi wrote. “And as the ultimate goal is to ensure that Twitter is a safe place for the widest possible range of perspectives, we will continue to evaluate and update our approach in this critical arena.”