Twitter Cracks Down on Trolls With More Abuse Controls

Twitter is continuing its campaign against abusive online messages, announcing a new slate of changes to the social network Tuesday aimed at curtailing Internet trolls and bullies.

Twitter has broadened the types of threats that it can punish by changing its rules to ban “threats of violence against others” rather than “direct, specific threats of violence against others.” The social network says the previous phrasing was too narrow to deal with the different types of abuse that occur online. Twitter is also taking a more granular approach to dealing with abuse by locking offending users’ accounts and forcing them to delete certain tweets to access their accounts again. The company also says it will limit the reach of abusive messages in some cases without actually deleting them, though it doesn’t specify how the messages will be limited.

The changes come a day after Twitter announced it would begin allowing users who don’t follow each other to send each other private messages. The move prompted a vocal backlash from some Twitter users who felt the new policy might invite more online abuse.

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