Twitter to Add Report Button

Social media giant, Twitter, is adding a few nifty new features and will clarify a few of its rules in response to recent rape threats, bomb threats, and other general abuses that has hit the site, of recent times.

Specifically involving European authors, journalists and Members of Parliament.  Albeit, do not expect these updates to make major ripples in America, as Twitter is not likely to post the changes it is making to the service, as described on a post to the Twitter UK blog, to its counterpart site  for United State users.

“Over the past week, we’ve been listening to your feedback on how we can improve our service. You told us that we need to make our rules clearer, simplify our abuse reporting process, and promote the responsible use of Twitter,” wrote UK general manager Tony Wang and Twitter senior director Del Harvey.

The major change to Twitter’s online services is that the social networking company will now be adding a “report button”, equivalent to what is found on the iOS Twitter app or on the mobile Twitter site, that will allow users to speedily flag Twitter messages instead of having to fill out a complicated and lengthy form for each Twitter user that is being abusive.  In the last seven days, Twitter representatives have been hinting that the new feature would be added to the site; the site’s blog post clarifies that Twitter’s looking to deploy the “report” button on both its  general Twitter.com site and the Android app “starting next month.”

The second major change is that it has updated its Twitter Rules to describe, in greater specificity, just what constitutes as “abuse” when using the site.  A new section is situated within its “Abuse and Spam” category, describes what Twitter calls “Targeted Abuse,” which includes blasting a user with Tweets from multiple accounts or single-handedly using an account to abuse users, known as a Twitter troll.

This move comes in response to a large online petition that was started as a result of some Twitter users’ harassment of Caroline Criado-Perez, a freelance journalist who successfully spearheaded a campaign to have author Jane Austen featured on a new version of the £10 note.  Additionally, Journalist Caitlin Moran took to Twitter to call for a 24-hour boycott of the service starting on 4th of August, she was asking users to Tweet “waiting for a troll solution” in an effort to encourage the company to sternly address the issues of identifying and reporting abuse.

It is fitting that Twitter’s official announcement about the changes has popped in immediately before the date of the boycott…

[Image via Metro]

SOURCE:  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422695,00.asp