CEO Dick Costolo said in leaked messages in February that Twitter “has sucked” at protecting users from harassment on the social network and desperately needs to do more. On Wednesday, Twitter launched a new tool for battling abuse on the platform that allows users to share their “block lists” with others and block multiple accounts quickly.
Previously, in order to block an account, you needed to go through the tedious process of discovering offenders and individually adding them to your own list. As of Wednesday, users can now share their block lists with each other and block a group of accounts at once. The feature is geared toward serving users who receive unusually high volumes of unwanted or offensive messages and tweets, the company said.
“We recognize that some users need more sophisticated tools,” Twitter engineer Xiaoyun Zhang said in a post. “This feature is yet another step towards making Twitter safer for everyone and will be available to some of our users starting today and all users in the coming weeks.”
The move is one of several steps Twitter has taken this year to bolster users’ defenses. Last December, Twitter added a blocked accounts tab to the settings page, making it easier to manage who you’re blocking, and ensured that users you’ve blocked can’t view your profile. In April, Twitter broadened its threats policy, which used to prohibit “direct, specific threats of violence against others” and now bans “threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others.” Twitter also made a policy allowing its support team to lock abusive accounts for set amounts of time.
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