Twitter makes new rule to stop trolling and abuse

SICK of the online hate? Social media platform Twitter has made new rules overnight to stop online threats and abuse.

Twitter generic image, logo.

TWITTER is cracking down on trolls with new policies that will make it easier to report abuse and block the haters.

The social media service, which has long been criticised for fostering cyber bullying, updated its policies overnight with a change to the definition of online abuse that closes a loophole used by people who circulated threats.

The previous policy stated that Twitter users could not “direct specific threats of violence against others”.

The new policy extends that to ban people from “threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others.” That means that someone who retweets a threat is now infringing Twitter policy.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently confessed that his social media had failed to stop harassment.

“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” he said.

Twitter boss: We will hunt down the trolls

Along with the policy update, Twitter announced a new feature that will “help us identify suspected abusive Tweets and limit their reach”.

The feature includes looking at the age of an account and the similarity of a Tweet with previous reported threats. This feature is designed to stop trolls immediately setting up another account when they have been reported and blocked.

While Twitter is targeting trolls, the blog post points out it is not looking at blocking all content that people might find offensive as the social media company walks the fine line stopping abuse and limiting freedom of speech.

“This feature does not take into account whether the content posted or followed by a user is controversial or unpopular,” the post says.

If someone receives an abusive tweet, they can click on a button on that tweet to report that as “abusive or harmful” and also report a particular user.

Under the new system, Twitter can freeze accounts for a period of time. The account will be unlocked only after the user deletes a tweet that Twitter staff rules as abusive.