Twitter rolls out new feature, ‘Time Out’ to tackle online abuse

Though Twitter has been launching many features and initiatives to tackle online abuse, Twitter has been giving the pushbutton to users to block and report abusive content, until now. However, with the latest feature, Twitter is taking the control in its own hands.

Boosting its anti-abuse initiatives, Twitter has rolled out 'Time Out' feature, restricting the post reach of accounts identified as abusive temporarily and ensuring this offensive content reaches only those who have willingly chosen to follow them.

Moreover, if the 'punished user' @mentions someone who doesn’t follow them, that person will not see the tweet in their notifications tab. Even if the post is retweeted by the user's followers, it will not be shown to people who don’t follow them.

Twitter is yet to make any official statement. But few fellows who used abusive content in their posts and were limited by the company, received email from Twitter.

The email says “creating a safer environment for people to freely express themselves is critical to the Twitter community.” Further the mail explains the reason why the users were being restricted and for how long.

Twitter is now your digital daddy.

According to @faggotfriday, it's put him on the naughty step for 12 hours. pic.twitter.com/sGK97nV1k1

— Harmful Opinions (@HarmfulOpinions) February 15, 2017

>automatically get limited cause I said retard I'm just considering leaving Twitter, fuck them pic.twitter.com/2NZpOPmlo2 — 🇺🇸 Drybones ム🗽💀 (@Drybones5) February 14, 2017

According to the BuzzFeed report who spotted the news first, Twitter is not simply putting people in timeout for using specific words. Citing a company spokesperson, the report said that "its teams look at an account’s behavior as opposed to simply language to determine if it’s being abusive."

Earlier this month, Twitter announced a number of changes. Apart from making abusive accounts invisible to most users, the company also filters out offensive replies to tweets, as well.

Considering the recent shift in anti-abuse initiatives, we can expect more features from Twitter in the near future.