Twitter updates abuse policy and limits the reach of violent tweets

Today Twitter is taking an active stance against violent threats and cyberbullying on its platform.

The company is implementing tech to identify and limit the reach of abusive tweets. “This feature takes into account a wide range of signals and context that frequently correlates with abuse including the age of the account itself, and the similarity of a Tweet to other content that our safety team has in the past independently determined to be abusive,” Twitter said in a blog post.

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The crackdown on abusive behavior also comes with an updated violent threat policy, which now codifies that direct, specific threats of violence against others as well as the promotion of violence against others will not be tolerated on the platform. Twitter says accounts that violate these terms will be locked.

In February chief executive Dick Costolo admitted that “we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform.”

Last summer, after actor Robin Williams’ death, daughter Zelda Williams left Twitter because of several abusive and visually disturbing tweets. But this is far from the only example of the many ways that Twitter has served as a platform for abuse.

Hopefully the new policy will stem the number of abusive tweets, though it’s doubtful it will stamp them out entirely.