Because tweets can be sent to anyone (as long as you aren’t blocked), and because anyone can easily create multiple proxy accounts, it’s been easy for users to abuse the system. Hateful comments, inflammatory responses, bullying, and direct plagiarism are just a few of the offenses that have plagued the platform for years.
Twitter’s done a decent job of keeping these malicious users at bay, with account suspension processes and detailed terms of service changes, but only recently has it begun seriously cracking down on this type of behavior. Now, a pair of updates is making the platform even more efficient at weeding out harmful practices.
The Safety Center
The first update comes in the form of the Safety Center, a new initiative designed to help users better understand the landscape of Twitter, as well as actions to take in response to certain destructive users or events. Following an update earlier this year that expanded users’ abilities to report abusive tweets, the Safety Center exists to provide information about public safety.
The Safety Center isn’t exactly revolutionary, but it does serve to streamline helpful information, guides, tips, and best practices that are otherwise difficult to track down on the site. In one location, users can quickly learn their rights as a user, different privacy settings, different types of abusive posts that can occur, and what to do should they encounter one. All this follows a public admission by then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in February that Twitter has a major problem with trolls and general abuse.
This update doesn’t serve to directly rid the community of offensive posters, but it does empower Twitter users to learn more information about the system and report such abusive posts responsibly and effectively.
Plagiarism reporting
Plagiarism might not seem like a big deal on Twitter; after all, you’re writing flash-in-the-pan updates of no more than 140 characters. What’s the worst that could happen from someone stealing it? For the average user, this might not seem like a big deal, but to comedians, journalists, and other personalities, this is the “secret sauce” that leads them to social success. Without those unique, original tweets, they wouldn’t have been able to amass thousands of followers, and if users take those tweets as their own, it seriously undermines their authority.
That’s why Twitter is rolling out a new reporting feature that allows users to report tweets as “stolen.” Once reported, the tweet in question is then hidden by Twitter behind a message that states: “This Tweet from @(user) has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder.” The copyright holder in question would be the original user who issued the tweet.
For reference, Twitter’s general policy on copyright infringement is to give the offending party 10 days to respond to the allegation. Formerly, this policy has mostly applied to pictures and videos, but now it seems to apply to general tweets as well.
The future for Twitter
Twitter knows if it wants to stick around as a major player in the social media world, it needs to clean up its troll and abuse problem. However, it can’t overhaul the format of its platform without immediately alienating its follower base and compromising its uniqueness in the field. Instead, we’re likely to see Twitter making similar iterative updates, gradually ratcheting up the site’s security, options for users, and reducing its tolerance for abusive behavior.
