Twitter cracks down on eggs as part of its anti-abuse measures

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Twitter's assault on abusive accounts and its famous problem with trolling was stepped up a gear today as the company announced a series of new measures designed to crack down on harassment.

Having recently introduced account timeouts and refinements to blocking and muting, the company today said it was making it possible to block tweets from Twitter eggs -- those with no profile picture which therefore default to an image of an egg. Other filtering options are available, and algorithms are to be used to automatically identify abusive content.

The ability to silence egg accounts is something that will be widely welcomed. Newly created accounts without profile pictures are responsible for a large proportion of abuse on the site -- but clearly not all of it. To help people further clean up the tweets they see, Twitter is also introducing a block option for accounts with unverified email addresses or phone numbers.

The option to mute keywords and phrases is being expanded. Rather than being a blunt tool, users can now opt to mute things they don't want to see for a fixed length of time -- from one day to forever.

Twitter also wants to be more open about what's happening to accounts that have been reported for abuse:

We're continuing to improve the transparency and openness of our reporting process. You'll start to hear more from us about accounts or Tweets that you've reported to our support teams -- both when you report harassment directed at you or another account. You will be notified when we've received your report and informed if we take further action. This will all be visible in your notifications tab on our app.

The site's seeming reliance on algorithms may cause concern for some people, and Twitter admits that "since these tools are new we will sometimes make mistakes." Continual improvements will be made, and Twitter says it will "only act on accounts when we’re confident, based on our algorithms, that their behavior is abusive."

Image credit: surowa / Shutterstock

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