Skip to main content

Twitter expands team dealing with abuse reports, updates anti-troll tools

twitter makes it easier to report abusive tweets cops fight
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Two weeks after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the company “sucks” at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, the microblogging service has issued an update on how it’s going about combating the problem.

In a post announcing the changes, Twitter’s Tina Bhatnagar said the support team focusing on handling abuse reports had recently been tripled in size, enabling the company to respond to issues in a more timely fashion.

Recommended Videos

Bhatnagar said improvements have also been made to how the Twitter team responds to reports of impersonation accounts, and that it’s increased its focus on so-called ‘bystander reports’ where someone that witnesses abuse on the platform – as opposed to the person who’s the subject of the abuse – brings banned behavior to the attention of Twitter.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

A number of new enforcement actions are also being added for use against accounts that violate Twitter’s rules. Although these new actions won’t be noticed by Twitter users who play clean, they provide Twitter staff with new options for acting against accounts that cause trouble.

“These investments in tools and people allow us to handle more reports of abuse with greater efficiency,” Bhatnagar wrote in the post. “So while we review many more reports than ever before, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the average response time to a fraction of what it was, and we see this number continuing to drop.”

She added that these latest changes are part of a “long-term approach” aimed at better protecting those on the platform.

Twitter last beefed up its safety tools in December following complaints from some users that the company wasn’t doing enough to combat abuse.

The contents of an internal email sent to employees by Dick Costolo highlighted how the company is struggling to deal with the issue, with the boss admitting it “sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.”

He went on, “It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”

Costolo promised to launch a more determined effort to push trolls off the service, or, at the least, to ensure that “when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.”

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
I paid Meta to ‘verify’ me — here’s what actually happened
An Instagram profile on an iPhone.

In the fall of 2023 I decided to do a little experiment in the height of the “blue check” hysteria. Twitter had shifted from verifying accounts based (more or less) on merit or importance and instead would let users pay for a blue checkmark. That obviously went (and still goes) badly. Meanwhile, Meta opened its own verification service earlier in the year, called Meta Verified.

Mostly aimed at “creators,” Meta Verified costs $15 a month and helps you “establish your account authenticity and help[s] your community know it’s the real us with a verified badge." It also gives you “proactive account protection” to help fight impersonation by (in part) requiring you to use two-factor authentication. You’ll also get direct account support “from a real person,” and exclusive features like stickers and stars.

Read more
Here’s how to delete your YouTube account on any device
How to delete your YouTube account

Wanting to get out of the YouTube business? If you want to delete your YouTube account, all you need to do is go to your YouTube Studio page, go to the Advanced Settings, and follow the section that will guide you to permanently delete your account. If you need help with these steps, or want to do so on a platform that isn't your computer, you can follow the steps below.

Note that the following steps will delete your YouTube channel, not your associated Google account.

Read more
How to download Instagram photos for free
Instagram app running on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Instagram is amazing, and many of us use it as a record of our lives — uploading the best bits of our trips, adventures, and notable moments. But sometimes you can lose the original files of those moments, leaving the Instagram copy as the only available one . While you may be happy to leave it up there, it's a lot more convenient to have another version of it downloaded onto your phone or computer. While downloading directly from Instagram can be tricky, there are ways around it. Here are a few easy ways to download Instagram photos.

Read more