Twitter shores up controls to lock out trolls and stop abuse

[Aerosol]

Twitter has announced changes making it easier for users to block offensive content and malicious tweets.

The firm said that the changes, which will come in a staged rollout, are part of a number of updates designed to simplify the user experience, and prevent "in-product harassment", or trolling.

The move could also provide some confidence in Twitter as it courts the enterprise market.

Twitter said in a blog post that the feature could be used by victims or witnesses of abusive posts.

"In our continuing effort to make your Twitter experience safer, we're enhancing our in-product harassment reporting and making improvements to ‘Block'," said Twitter director of user safety, Shreyas Doshi.

"These enhancements similarly improve the reporting process for those who observe abuse but aren't receiving it directly.

"And to enable faster response times, we've made the first of several behind-the-scenes improvements to the tools and processes that help us review reported tweets and accounts."

A new section of the Settings page allows Twitter users to review and manage the accounts that they have blocked. Doshi added that the blocked accounts will not be able to view the user's profile.

Twitter said that it has also made some back-end changes which will allow it to deal with reports of abuse and harassment more quickly.

"These enhancements similarly improve the reporting process for those who observe abuse but aren't receiving it directly," Doshi said.

The update is starting with a small subset of users, and will be rolled out more widely over time.

Caroline Criado-Perez, a British journalist and feminism campaigner who faced abuse on Twitter last year after pushing to have Jane Austen’s face on the £10 note, has praised Twitter's latest move.

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