Social Media Site Twitter Debuts On The New York Stock Exchange (Photo : Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)
Twitter has been doing an effort to tackle cyber bullying as the social networking and microblogging site has made another step in controlling the abuse and harassment on their platform.
Targeted harassment on Twitter has been such a consistent problem on the social platform which urged CEO Jack Dorsey to make stopping it one of his top priorities, CNBC has learned. Additionally, Twitter's vice president of trust and safety Del Harvey said that their decisions aim to address abuse on their site with a way that is most effective and fast-acting as possible.
Twitter is upgrading its mute feature wherein instead of just letting users to mute accounts they don't want to see tweets from, now users can mute words, phrases and notifications. Victims of targeted harassment on the site could finally stay away from harassers as they can choose to block out the notifications if someone malicious tags them in a harmful tweet.
Under Mr Dorsey, Twitter has been taking a more domineering approach to hate speech on the platform, Financial Times reported .One good example is prohibiting Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative commentator, after he allegedly led a racist harassment campaign against Leslie Jones, the African American "Ghostbusters" actress because of her skin.
Ms Jones, who is now back on the platform, said at the time she, was leaving Twitter "with tears and a very sad heart". Racism has also been a rampant problem across the world and social media platforms seemed to have made it worse for the victims since its easier to harass someone over the Internet.
Twitter stated on Tuesday that they already conducted tests for the feature in real time to know whether it will actually be useful for every victim on the site. The platform also stated on it blog post that they needed to take "a step back" for their new approach and to address what was most needed in Twitter.
With this step made by Twitter, its shares which are down 16 per cent in 2016 rose 0.3 per cent to $19.219 at midday in New York. However, that does not seem to be enough to save the company.
