Users are at a click away from removing low quality tweets

Twitter’s users now have the possibility to utilise of a quality filter which permits them to eliminate tweets coming from low quality sources, such as automated or offensive media.

Before, this feature was only available to people who had verified accounts, such as celebrities who had blue ticks next to their name. However, Twitter has been criticised several times about the way it handles issues regarding online harassment. For this reason, it is now opening this feature to all of its users.

Once this option is turned on, the tool uses different technologies to look at different signals and identify important information such as the location from where the tweet came from and what other tweets had been sent from the same account. If this results in low quality tweets, possibly coming from automated or offensive media, then the tweets are cut out.

Besides this tool, Twitter is also releasing other useful features such as letting people to see only notifications coming from accounts which are followed by the user. These various steps are being undertaken by Twitter to address the various complaints about the online abuse experienced on this social medium.

Apart from the release of such tools, Twitter has also announced that it is blocking hundreds of accounts which are linked to extremists or terrorists. In fact, the company has announced that as from February 2016 it has closed around 235,000 accounts which were violating the site’s policies related to terrorism. However, it has also said that its work is not completed yet.

Over the last year, the amount of accounts that were suspended by Twitter increased by 80%. This was possible due to an increase in the amount of reviewing teams which check reported accounts and by close collaboration with other social media. However, the company has explained that it is very difficult to identify terrorist content as there is no specific tool to do so.

In these circumstances, Twitter is using different forms of technology like proprietary spamfighting tools to identify abuse. These tools have already helped the company to identify more than one third of the accounts which were suspended for promoting terrorism. Twitter is also collaborating with different organisations that work against online terrorism. These also include law enforcement organisations which at certain extent are allowed to ask for certain content to be removed.