At the start of 2019, twitter claimed that it will be proactive in its approach towards eliminating abuse and its effects on the platform. The company said it was to work towards reducing “the burden on victims of abuse” and “taking action before abuse is reported”.
Twitter, in its wider effort to decrease the level of abuse on the platform, is currently testing a new feature that will hide the messages which the automated system will flag as possibly offensive. It is introducing a new section called ‘additional messages’ which users will be able to access from the ‘message requests’ folder. All the unwanted and offensive DMs will be tucked away in this section. Users will be able to view the messages if they want to, however, the offensive messages will not make their way to the message requests folder.
The update was announced in a tweet which says,
Unwanted messages aren’t fun. So, we’re testing a filter in your DM requests to keep those out of sight, out of mind.
Unwanted messages aren’t fun. So we’re testing a filter in your DM requests to keep those out of sight, out of mind. pic.twitter.com/Sg5idjdeVv
— Support (@Support) August 15, 2019
A similar feature was introduced by Twitter in 2017 for replies to tweets. If you scroll down through replies of a popular or moderately popular post, you will see a button titled ‘additional replies’ that may contain any offensive replies.
If successful, the feature will be a great way of cutting down on the amount of offensive content an average person is exposed to. The feature will roll out for all web, iOS, and Android users soon.
