Twitter has another round of updates intended to combat abuse on the platform.
Twitter is working to identify accounts engaging in abusive behavior, even if the account hasn't yet been flagged, Twitter VP of Engineering Ed Ho wrote in a blog post. If an account is repeatedly tweeting at non-followers without solicitation, for instance, Twitter may make it so that only the tweeter's followers can see their tweets for a certain amount of time.
The rule will apply to accounts engaging in "patterns of abusive behavior," Ho wrote. "Our platform supports the freedom to share any viewpoint, but if an account continues to repeatedly violate the Twitter Rules, we will consider taking further action," he added.
The idea is to punish only abusive accounts but because the tools are new, Twitter might accidentally take action against a benign user. "We will sometimes make mistakes, but know that we are actively working to improve and iterate on them everyday," Ho wrote.
Twitter is also introducing new filtering options to give users more control over the notifications they see. You can now mute notifications from people you don't follow, so-called "egg" accounts without a profile photo, as well as users with unverified email addresses and phone numbers. To do that, click on the gear icon in the upper-left corner of the Twitter app, click through to Advanced filters, and select the norifications you want to mute.
"Many people requested more filter options for their notifications, and we're excited to bring these to everyone on Twitter," Ho wrote.
You can also now mute tweets with certain words, phrases, or entire conversations from appearing in your timeline, and decide how long that content is silenced: a day, week, month, or indefinitely. This new tool comes after Twitter in November started letting people mute this content from their notifications.
Finally, when you report abuse on the platform, Twitter will follow up to let you know it received the report, along with any action it's taking. This will be visible in your notifications tab.