Twitter recently came under the limelight when it allowed its users to have more control over their experience on the platform. The company has taken another step to curb harassment on its platform by introducing Quality Filter. The new feature enables users to filter their notifications and timeline, and view tweets from only those they are following.
The announcement emerged yesterday to protect users from offending tweets. The company has plans to filter out tweets based on variety of signals, such as “account origin and behavior.” However, the new feature only filters tweets on the user’s timeline; the offensive tweets would still be present on the platform. Several experts believe that the new step taken by the company would limit the reach of those users with suspicious activity, as their tweets will be filtered automatically from the victim’s timeline.
“Last year we began testing a quality filter setting and we’re now rolling out a feature for everyone. When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior,” Twitter explained on its blog.
Two simple settings to give you better control over your Twitter experience. https://t.co/pEJuMUhCYs http://pic.twitter.com/jmFd0rDoV6
— Twitter Support (@Support) August 18, 2016
On the downside, blocking tweets of offenders means that users might miss out some of the mentions that they want to see. The new feature was initially introduced as a test but the company now plans to roll it out to all users across the globe.
The micro-blogging website has been long-criticized over its failure to protect users from cyber bulling and harassment on its platform. It was recently reported that Twitter has decided to shut its virtual doors by next year, as it miserably failed to protect users from cyber harassment. However, it later denied the reports and stated that it has no plans to shut down any time soon.
Tech experts believe that cyber bullying and harassment is the main reason why it couldn’t keep up with Facebook, which currently has 1.6 billion monthly active users (MAUs), while Twitter has only 310 million subscribers on its platform. Moreover, it has failed to offer any good news to its investors since the start of this year with its stock shedding 17.89% of its value.
Moreover, the verified profile feature was previously available to celebrities only, and was denoted with a blue badge next to their name. Now, Twitter has allowed all users to apply for the blue badge. The move is also a part of the company’s plan to eradicate counter abusive criticism and harassment from its platform.
Turning the feature on will enable users to experience reduction in the amount of interaction with cyber bullies, but it won’t filter the accounts that users follow or the people they have interacted with before. In any case, we’ll have to wait and see if this feature helps resolve the company’s harassment problem.
