Twitter adds tools to deal with abuse

She went on to state that users who promoted any sort of violence, threatened people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease would be suspended on the micro-blogging platform. Twitter warned it would take action against those misusing multiple accounts and impersonating others.

The social media network already has a ban on users who look to promote terrorism and those making direct threats of violence. Twitter added it would suspend accounts that incited hatred and harm in any form.

“As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs — but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse. We believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth. But that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up,” Cristina wrote in a post.

“Keeping users safe requires a comprehensive and balanced approach where everyone plays a role. We will continue to build on these initiatives to empower our users and ensure that Twitter remains a platform for people to express themselves,” she added.

Twitter had come under a barrage of criticism for the inability to deal with trolls and cyber harassment on its platform. The social network’s former CEO, Dick Costolo, had written in a internal memo that he was ‘ashamed’ of the company’s lack of action at handling harassment and assigned more staff to the cause and introduced harassment reporting tolls. Verified users were given the option of using a quality filter that removed threatening comments from the user’s timeline.