B&TB&TB&T
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Search
Trending topics:
  • Nine
  • Cairns Crocodiles
  • Seven
  • Federal Election
  • AI
  • AFL
  • Pinterest
  • Married At First Sight
  • NRL
  • News Corp
  • Channel 10
  • Cairns Hatchlings
  • WPP
  • Anthony Albanese
  • oOh!Media
  • Ten
  • Special
  • TV Ratings
  • Radio Ratings
  • Sports Marketing

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
Reading: Twitter Launches Anti-Harassment Tools
Share
B&TB&T
Subscribe
Search
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
B&T > Technology > Twitter Launches Anti-Harassment Tools
Technology

Twitter Launches Anti-Harassment Tools

Erin M Doyle
Published on: 16th November 2016 at 12:11 PM
Erin M Doyle
Share
5 Min Read
SHARE

Twitter has introduced a mute filter, muted conversation and user report infrastructure in an attempt to combat the trolls, eggs and hate speech on the platform.

Twitter has augmented its mute feature to allow users to filter specific phrases, keywords, and hashtags, which Instagram launched in September this year. B&T chatted with Marne Levine, Global Chief Operating Officer Of Instagram about the comment moderation feature.

Twitter’s new mute tool allow users to mute entire conversation threads. This will allow users to stop receiving notifications from a specific Twitter thread without removing the thread from your timeline or blocking any users.

Twitter also announced a “hateful conduct” reporting option (when users report an “abusive or harmful” tweet, they’ll now see an option for “directing hate against a race, religion, gender, or orientation”). Twitter is giving a more direct way to report hate speech for users, or for others, whenever they see it happening.

 

PRESS RELEASE

Twitter is the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone is talking about. What makes Twitter great is that it’s open to everyone and every opinion. We’ve seen a growing trend of people taking advantage of that openness and using Twitter to be abusive to others.

The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we’ve seen across the Internet has risen sharply over the past few years. These behaviors inhibit people from participating on Twitter, or anywhere. Abusive conduct removes the chance to see and share all perspectives around an issue, which we believe is critical to moving us all forward. In the worst cases, this type of conduct threatens human dignity, which we should all stand together to protect.

Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, we’ve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct. We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve. There are three areas we’re focused on, and happy to announce progress around today: controls, reporting, and enforcement.

Twitter has long had a feature called “mute” which enables you to mute accounts you don’t want to see Tweets from. Now we’re expanding mute to where people need it the most: in notifications. We’re enabling you to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations you don’t want to see notifications about, rolling out to everyone in the coming days. This is a feature we’ve heard many of you ask for, and we’re going to keep listening to make it better and more comprehensive over time.

Our hateful conduct policy prohibits specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Today we’re giving you a more direct way to report this type of conduct for yourself, or for others, whenever you see it happening. This will improve our ability to process these reports, which helps reduce the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and helps to strengthen a culture of collective support on Twitter.

And finally, on enforcement, we’ve retrained all of our support teams on our policies, including special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct, and implemented an ongoing refresher program. We’ve also improved our internal tools and systems in order to deal more effectively with this conduct when it’s reported to us. Our goal is a faster and more transparent process.

We don’t expect these announcements to suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. No single action by us would do that. Instead we commit to rapidly improving Twitter based on everything we observe and learn.

Thank you for choosing Twitter to amplify your voice to the world. We honor our role in protecting your right to speak freely, and our collective responsibility to human dignity.

Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts
Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

No related posts.

TAGGED: aana reset, einsights, Social Media
Share
Erin M Doyle
By Erin M Doyle
Follow:
Erin Doyle is an experienced digital marketing specialist and comms expert.

Latest News

New Research Finds 90% Increase In Advertising Fatigue When Ad Campaigns Are Disconnected
13/05/2025
Skincare Brand QV Launches ‘Care Behind Every Bathroom Door’ Campaign Via Sunday Gravy & Half Dome
13/05/2025
“Outstanding Or Dog Sh*t”: Inside The Relentless Mindset That Made Ariarne Titmus An Olympic Champion
13/05/2025
TV Ratings (12/5/25): New High-Stakes Trivia Show ‘The Floor’ Wows Aussies & Does Numbers For Nine
13/05/2025
//

B&T is Australia’s leading news publication magazine for the advertising, marketing, media and PR industries.

 

B&T is owned by parent company The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.

About B&T

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise

Top Categories

  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • TV Ratings

Sign Up for Our Newsletter



B&TB&T
Follow US
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Register Lost your password?