Twitter forms safety council to help prevent abuse

Twitter lets people around the world express diverse opinions, but it can also be a hellhole of harassment and abuse.

The company has repeatedly tried to solve this issue, with feeble results. Now, it has announced that it is forming the Twitter Trust & Safety Council, a panel of organizations and experts who will help the company develop tools and policies to get rid of abuse, bullying and harassment on the platform.

Currently, the council consists of some 40 global organizations and individuals, including the Anti-Defamation League, Childnet International, Thorn, Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) and Bravehearts (see the full list here). 

"With hundreds of millions of tweets sent per day, the volume of content on Twitter is massive, which makes it extraordinarily complex to strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power," Patricia Cartes, head of Twitter's Global Policy Outreach, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. The newly assembled council, she claims, is a "foundational part of our strategy to ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter."

Twitter has made a number of changes, especially in the past year, to deal with its ongoing problem of harassment.

Twitter has made a number of changes, especially in the past year, to deal with its ongoing problem of harassment. In February 2015, the company said it tripled the number of staff handling abuse reports; in March 2015, it introduced a new quality filter, making some abusive tweets invisible to users. And in December of last year, Twitter updated its rules, clarifying what it considers "abusive behavior and hateful conduct."

None of these regulations fully solved Twitter's abuse problem, as was clearly visible from last week's onslaught of hate directed at anyone mentioning the possibility of Twitter changing the way it displays tweets in users' timelines.

The formation of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council is undoubtedly a move in the right direction; Twitter is listening to the people and organizations who know how to fight and prevent abuse. 

It's yet to be seen whether it will effect any long-term change.

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