Facing a rising tide of election-fueled trolling and harassment, Twitter is doubling down on cyberbullies and letting users choose exactly what they see in their Twitter feed.
The social media giant announced a new online abuse policy Tuesday, including an upgrade to its "mute" feature, which will allow users to "mute notifications, keywords, phrases and even entire conversations."
"This is another step on a path towards trying to address abuse and do it in a way that is as rapid and as effective as possible," wrote Del Harvey, Twitter's Head of Trust and Safety, in a post Tuesday morning.
"It's a real priority for [CEO Jack Dorsey] and the company as a whole," she wrote.
Over the next few weeks, Twitter will be expanding its hateful conduct policy and encouraging users to directly report any Tweet that targets them or other users based on their "race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease," wrote Harvey.
Twitter also announced that it has retrained all its support teams on "cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct" to deal faster with online abuse. In the coming days, the social media site will be implementing an "ongoing refresher program" to help the support teams address issues appropriately.
"We've made some progress," Dorsey tweeted.
