Twitter vows to wage war on internet trolls
Twitter vows to wage war on internet trolls
Bruce Daisley, head of website in Europe, says it will
expose the worst offenders by encouraging people to share lists of blocked
users
By Tom Morgan 9:24AM GMT 26 Dec 2015
Twitter is giving its users new powers to block internet
trolls amid claims abusive behaviour is hampering the social media site from
catching up with Facebook.
Bruce Daisley, the head of Twitter in Europe, said the
site would give its 320 millions users new tools to protect them from trolls
and expose the worst offenders by encouraging people to share lists of blocked
users.
Twitter, which celebrates its tenth birthday next year,
is worth more than £22 billion but is lagging behind Facebook, which has more
than one billion users and a valuation of £167 billion.
In February Dick Costolo, Twitter's former chief
executive, admitted in an internal email that the company "sucked" at
dealing with trolls.
But Mr Daisley now says the site has cracked down on
nuisance users who hurl extreme abuse at those they disagree with. Measures
include contacting suspected trolls to tell them "what you are doing here
exists in the real world" and encouraging people to publish lists of users
they have blocked.
"We have spent longer and more effort on user safety
than any single other thing," Mr Daisley told The Independent newspaper.
"The measures we have done have directly correlated
to a reduction in the amount of bad behaviour on the platform. The other part
of the strategy has involved giving users new tools to block trolls and to
expose the worst offenders by encouraging people to share their lists of
blocked accounts."
Mr Daisley said the measures, introduced over the past
year, had led to a massive increase in the number of reports and made people
feel a lot safer.
The hacking group Anonymous recently claimed to have
taken down 20,000 Twitter accounts that were supposedly "pro-Isis".
Many of them had merely been written in Arabic. Others on the hit-list belonged
to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and media outlets including BBC News.
Twitter recently launched its Moments feature in the UK,
working with 18 media production partners to present the best Twitter stories
of the day.
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