The rampant bullying and trolling that occurs on Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) has been cited as one of the reasons Twitter hasn't been acquired by the likes of Salesforce.com, Inc. (CRM), despite the advantages Twitter could bring.
The Walt Disney Company (DIS) decided that the micro-blogging site didn't fits its image or brand, fearing that the family Disney has worked to create would be compromised by the pervasive racist and sometimes sexist tweets spewed by Twitter users.
It seems the embattled company social media company is ready to do something about this. The company on Tuesday announced that it was cracking down cyberbullying on its platform by allow users the ability to more easily block content and report offensive posts. The company also said it is giving its support team more training to help flag posts from "trolls."
These improvement have been rumored for more than a year. “We haven’t always moved as quickly as we would have liked to, and we haven’t always done as much as we would have liked to,” admitted Del Harvey, who leads Twitter’s trust and safety efforts. “Part of that is we’re trying to be very thoughtful about the decisions we make, and make sure there aren’t unintended and negative consequences.”
Starting today, Twitter users can modify their notification settings within the app to mute certain keywords, phrases, usernames, emoji and even hashtags. Once these restrictions have been added, tweets that contain those terms, emojis or hashtags won't be seen on user's feeds nor will users receive push notifications. Twitter, however, said the restrictions won't prevent those tweets from appearing in search results.
The company has also raised the bar on its harassment reporting system to allow users to more easily report “hateful conduct,” which the company defines as behavior “that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.”
Twitter says it will eventually bring muting to unspecified other parts of the platform. It remains to be seen if M&A suitors will rethink Twitter's value within the scope of their own businesses. These are nonetheless important first steps towards allowing Twitter to be taken more seriously as news outlet.
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