Twitter is testing a new safety feature which could help silence abuse.
The social media platform has announced plans to launch a new feature that it hopes will help crack down on abuse and trolling on the site, which they’ve named Safety Mode.
Safety Mode will flag accounts using hateful remarks, or those bombarding people with uninvited comments, and block them for seven days.
And the feature will work automatically once enabled from the settings menu, meaning users don’t have to deal with unwelcome tweets.
Katy Minshall, head of Twitter UK Public Policy, said: "While we have made strides in giving people greater control over their safety experience on Twitter, there is always more to be done.
"We're introducing Safety Mode; a feature that allows you to automatically reduce disruptive interactions on Twitter, which in turn improves the health of the public conversation."
When the feature is enabled, the system will assess the content of tweets as well as the relationship between the tweet author and replier, so that accounts that are followed by the user or frequently interacted with, will not be autoblocked.
The news comes after it was reported last month that Instagram is also rolling out a similar feature to shut down hate on its platform.
The feature will automatically hide comments and messages from people who do not follow, or just started following, users who have it enabled.
According to Instagram, the feature was designed to stop messages and comments from large numbers of people during “sudden spikes” of abuse.
