Twitter Cuts Off The Arms Of Trolls To Limit Their Reach

With mounting pressure to act on trolls on its platform, Twitter has been launching anti-abuse measures one after another for months. Recently, the social media company had to back off on one of these fixes after an uproar from users. Now, Twitter is finally implementing a new anti-abuse tactic that might just work by limiting the ability of past abusers to repeat their offense.

Twitter has had to contend with a barrage of criticisms for its lackluster response to cyber trolls on its microblogging platform. As a result, it has been enacting numerous fixes that are meant to reduce the incidents of offensive Tweets such as preventing the creation of numerous accounts by abusers and suppressing visibility of Tweets. Now, trolls can’t even Tweet at their victims anymore, Ubergizmo reports.

The new anti-troll measure basically revolves around the concept of preventing users who previously committed abusive actions towards others and have been marked for it. By cutting off their access to potential targets, trolls will no longer be able to abuse anyone who is not a follower since the Tweets won’t even show up on their feeds.

Retweets are affected by the changes as well since the followers of trolls won’t be able to retweet the offensive post in an attempt to get around the new system. This is basically a huge compromise, which protects users from those who would try to harass them while still maintaining the ability of the trolls to practice free speech.

Once the new measures take place, users who have been branded as trolls will receive a notification from Twitter. This is meant to alert the user that limitations have been imposed on their Tweets and that it will only be for a set amount of time.

“We’ve detected some potentially abusive behavior from your account. So only your follower can see your activity on Twitter for the amount of time shown below,” the notification will read.