Is Twitter allowing users to hide replies from their conversations? Yes, in June!

In a blogpost, Twitter has said that it has been following on its promise to make the social media platform free of abuse, spam, and other things that distract from the public conversation.

Sharing an update with users, the company announced that it will be releasing ‘Hide Replies’ feature starting June. In February this year, the company had confirmed about its plans to launch this feature.

The feature is expected to allow a user to hide replies which they feel hasn’t contributed to the conversation, putting the person posting the original tweet in control.

The company stated in the blogpost that it will update its rules to make them shorter and easier to comprehend in the coming weeks.

At the same time, Twitter is also looking to take faster action when it comes to removing abuse and spam on the platform. In lieu of this, the company stated that it will improve its technology to help review content that breaks its rules before it’s even reported by the user.

In a recent conversation at TED2019 platform, Jack Dorsey, Founder and CEO, spoke about making Twitter abuse and spam free. Stating that it was the health of the conversation that worries him the most about the platform, he said,  

"Our purpose is to serve the public conversation, and we have seen a number of attacks on it. We’ve seen abuse, we’ve seen harassment, we’ve seen manipulation, automatic and human coordination, misinformation… What worries me most is our ability to address it in a systemic way that is scalable.”

But with conversations around making Twitter abuse free, how well has the social media platform fared to the promise which Founder Jack Dorsey made last year?

In its Q4 update and letter to shareholders, Twitter said,

“Our focus on improving the health of the public conversation on Twitter delivered promising results in 2018, with a 16 percent year-over-year decrease in abuse reports from people who had an interaction with their alleged abuser on Twitter, and enforcement on reported content that was 3X more effective.”

In addition to this Twitter also revealed in its current blogpost:

•  38 percent of the abusive content that’s enforced on Twitter at present is surfaced proactively to its teams for review instead of relying on reports from people on Twitter.

• 100,000 accounts suspended for creating new accounts after a suspension during January-March 2019. This is a 45 percent increase from the same time last year.

• 60 percent faster response to appeals requests with our new in-app appeal process.

• 3 times more abusive accounts suspended within 24 hours after a report compared to the same time last year.

• 2.5 times more private information removed with a new, easier reporting process.

Previously, Twitter only reviewed potentially abusive Tweets if it was reported to the platform. Thus, earlier this year, Twitter made it a priority to take a proactive approach to abuse in addition to relying on people’s reports.

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