Twitter adds expanded mute options to tackle online abuse

Twitter is a real-time stream of news and opinion that is often the fastest way to see what people are talking about. But, it's also a platform that has become deeply ingrained with abuse and hate speech, which has in turn forced people off the platform altogether.

The company has long recognized this, but has been slow to figure out a way to address the problem. Twitter says as much in a newly published blog post on the abuse problem: "The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we've seen across the Internet has risen sharply over the past few years. These behaviors inhibit people from participating on Twitter, or anywhere."

As part of a longer-term solution, Twitter is expanding its mute function, which until now, has been used for muting single Twitter users from your stream (which isn't that helpful if you're being harassed by multiple users, or by people who create new accounts every time they're muted or suspended). The company says the new feature works like this:

"Twitter has long had a feature called "mute" which enables you to mute accounts you don't want to see Tweets from. Now we're expanding mute to where people need it the most: in notifications. We're enabling you to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations you don't want to see notifications about, rolling out to everyone in the coming days."

The company also says it's retrained internal support teams, which are responsible for enforcing Twitter's code of conduct and investigating reports of violations, but admits, "We don't expect these announcements to suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter."