Twitter is going all guns blazing against trolls and abusive users

Twitter has launched a number of product updates in the last few months to try and curb abuse and trolling on its platform, including changes to its private messaging feature and algorithmic filters to hide abusive posts. And looks like, the company is delivering on its promise made this January of making "Twitter a safer place."

Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever.

— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017

Twitter says that it's sustained efforts and measures have shown promising results. Citing internal data, the micro-blogging site said that majority of disciplined user accounts do not commit a second infraction, suggesting it has had success in reshaping some users’ behavior.

At a meeting with a group of reporters this week in San Francisco, Twitter said it is “taking action” against 10 times the number of accounts it did one year ago and that it suspended twice as many accounts in the last four months than it did in the four months before that. Twitter's action means that it is warning the user, temporarily limiting user reach so that their tweets are visible only to their followers or suspending the account of the user. The company, however, did not share the hard numbers behind its data.

Twitter claims it has seen 25 percent dip in abuse reports for accounts that were previously disciplined and 65 percent of users who have been disciplined do not repeat their abusive actions. Twitter added that its new quality filter—which allows users to mute certain keywords and filter out notifications from bot accounts—has led to the company seeing a 40 percent drop in the number of blocks issued by accounts that have received a "@mention" from accounts that don't follow them.

Twitter has often been criticized for not doing enough to check hate speech. The company continues to receive flak for tolerating anti-Semitic and Nazi speech on the platform and has faced calls from some quarters to ban President Donald Trump, who critics argue has incited his followers to harassment and violence.

Twitter has a long road ahead when it comes to ending the abuse problem. Twitter says it will continue investing in anti-abuse tools, sharing more data along the way. “It’s something we’re going to have to keep working on,” Twitter's vice president of Trust and Safety, Del Harvey said.