New features are in the works that could help Twitter users who are experiencing abusive situations on its platform, such as when another user has engineered a pile-on.
Racist abuse is still a problem on the platform, and these new features could help to counteract some of that.
The company says it’s toying with providing users with more control over the @mention feature to help people “control unwanted attention”, as privacy engineer Dominic Camozzi puts it.
Currently, Twitter’s notification system alerts a user when they’ve been directly tagged in a tweet — drawing their attention to the content. This is great if the tweet is funny or interesting. But if the content is abusive or threatening, it can be stressful for the user.
Twitter has grouped these latest anti-abuse ideas as “early concepts” and encourages users to submit feedback as it considers what changes it should make.
Potential features the social media giant is considering include letting users ‘unmention’ themselves — i.e. remove their name from another’s tweet, so they’re no longer tagged in it (and any ongoing chatter around it won’t keep appearing in their mentions feed).
It’s also considering making an unmention action that is even more powerful when an account that a user doesn’t follow mentions them — by providing a special notification to “highlight potential unwanted situations”.
If the user then goes ahead and unmentions themselves, Twitter envisages removing the ability of the tweet-composer to tag them again in future — which looks like it could be a robust tool against strangers who abuse @mentions. When a tweet gets attention, you may have seen this; a random user will post a link to their work that has nothing to do with the conversation at hand.
Twitter says it’s also looking at adding a switch that can be flipped to prevent anyone on the platform from @-ing you — for one day; three days; or seven days. This will give users relief and some peace for a specified time.
Twitter says it wants to make changes in this area to help users by stopping “the situation from escalating further” – for example, by providing users with notifications when they are receiving lots of mentions and giving them the option to review the tweets in question or to shield themselves (e.g. by blocking all mentions for a day or longer).
Let’s hope Twitter can make these changes happen as cyberbullying and racial abuse are brief on the platform.
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