Twitter Expands ‘Safety Mode’ To Tackle Trolls

Twitter has expanded its anti troll measure called Safety Mode into more English speaking nations, as it seeks to lessen the toxic atmosphere often found on the micro-blogging platform.

It was back in May 2020 when Safety Mode was first introduced to beta users. Essentially it is a conversation settings tool that allows users to limit who can reply to their tweets.

Twitter had introduced the tool in an effort to halt online abuse and because “unwanted replies make it hard to have meaningful conversations.”

Safety Mode

Now Twitter has confirmed it is expanding this “to some of you in several new English-speaking markets to gain more feedback and insights.”

The tool will allow users to flag accounts making hateful remarks and comments, or those bombarding users with uninvited comments.

Users can block them for seven days, the BBC reported.

It seems that half of Twitter users in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland will have access to Safety Mode.

In addition, a companion feature called Proactive Safety Mode will proactively identify potential harmful replies.

Twitter first began testing the option of sending users a prompt, warning them when their tweet reply uses “harmful language” back in May 2020.

Users can enable these functions under settings.

Toxic atmosphere

The move follows other attempts by Twitter to ease the toxic atmosphere, harassment, and nasty comments the microblogging website is unfortunately famous for.

Co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey in April 2019, said he wanted to change the platform and move “away from outrage and mob behaviour and towards productive, healthy conversation.”

One of those measures to stop its platform being used to distort the political landscape for example, saw Twitter in November 2019 ban all political advertising worldwide.