Twitter is once again stepping up its efforts to help users
facing harassment on its social network.
The company just added new tools that make it easier for
people to block several people at once. With the update,
users are now able to share lists of accounts they have
blocked and make them available to other users.
In a blog post Wednesday, Twitter User Safety Engineer
Xiaoyun Zhang said that the latest update was an expansion
of the platform’s existing mute and block tools.
“While many users find them useful, we also recognize
that some users — those who experience high volumes of
unwanted interactions on Twitter — need more
sophisticated tools,”
Zhang wrote.
“We also hope these advanced blocking tools will prove
useful to the developer community to further improve
users’ experience.”
The feature will be particularly useful for groups that are
often targeted by the same individuals. Now, rather than
each user manually blocking each account, one person can
share a list of accounts and others can block the entire list
with just one step.
You can share a list of accounts you have blocked, from the
“blocked accounts” tab in Twitter’s main settings menu from
twitter.com. From there, select “advanced” options and
“export your list.” This creates a .csv file that you can share
with others. Similarly, users can upload a list that’s been
shared with them from the “import a list” option in the same
menu.
The feature will be rolling out to some users beginning
Wednesday and Twitter says it should be available to
everyone “in the coming weeks.”
Wednesday’s update comes as Twitter has ramped up its
efforts to respond to criticism that it doesn’t do enough to
help users deal with harassment on its platform, an area
that CEO D!ck Costolo has also acknowledged the company
desperately needs to improve.
The company previously streamlined its harassment
reporting tools, added features that make it easier to report
threats to policeand updated its policies to more explicitly
address violent threats and revenge po.rn.
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