“While there is still much work to be done, people are experiencing significantly less abuse on Twitter today than they were six months ago,” says Ed Ho, general manager for consumer product and engineering at Twitter.
Ho says Twitter is “taking action” on 10 times the number of abusive accounts on a daily basis in comparison to this time last year. This includes a crackdown on repeat offenders who attempt to create new accounts following suspension for violating Twitter terms of service.
Reformed behaviour
In addition, the social networking platform has demonstrated evidence of reformed behaviour in response to punitive actions, ie accounts with “problematic” tweets can have temporary limitations placed upon them, preventing the user from tweeting, retweeting or liking while visitors to the profile are alerted that it is temporarily restricted, possibly as a result of violating Twitter rules.
As a result, Ho says, accounts subject to this temporary restriction generate 25 per cent fewer abuse reports and 65 per cent of these accounts do not go on to “reoffend” on Twitter.
