Twitter has finally (FI-NAL-LY) unveiled a way to silence the trolls – it’s using machine learning to hide the tormentors tweets from the feeds of the tormented.
The company will hide certain replies from conversations and search results in a bid to “improve the health of the conversation” on Twitter.
Those tweets will still be available, but users will have to manually click “show more replies” in order to reveal them.
So how is Twitter picking up on the trolls? Well it’s more than a case of monitoring the words used by trolls in abusive tweets.
Twitter is using machine learning to study whether email addresses are unconfirmed, or whether users are signing up for multiple accounts at the same time. It’ll also hide tweets from people who mention accounts multiple times, without that account following them back.
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Twitter says its testing has shown positive results, with a 4% drop off in reported abuse from search and 8% fewer reports of abuse from within conversations.
We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.
— jack (@jack) March 1, 2018
Twitter acknowledges there’s a long way to go, but says its tech will learn more (and make mistakes) over time.
In the blog post, Twitter said: “This technology and our team will learn over time and will make mistakes. There will be false positives and things that we miss; our goal is to learn fast and make our processes and tools smarter.
“We’ll continue to be open and honest about the mistakes we make and the progress we are making. We’re encouraged by the results we’ve seen so far, but also recognize that this is just one step on a much longer journey to improve the overall health of our service and your experience on it.”
We’re tackling issues of behaviors that detract from the public conversation on Twitter. This technology focuses on behavior, not content.
You can see the full conversation by tapping Show more replies or choose to see everything in your search settings.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) May 15, 2018
Do you trust Twitter to finally tackle to the trolls? Drop us a line @TrustedReviews on… erm… Twitter. And keep it friendly, yeah?
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
