Twitter continues its attempts to fight abuse on its network, presenting a new filter, which is designed to automatically prevent users from seeing threatening messages. Twitter is also banning indirect threats of violence and is ready to introduce temporary suspensions for accounts that disregard its policies.

Under the new filtering system, the tweets sent directly to a user from a recently registered account and using language similar to previously flagged messages wouldn’t show up in a mentions column. Although such tweets won’t be deleted from the site, the targeted user won’t see them. The new feature is automatically on for all users and can’t be opted out.

In addition to the new filter, the company introduces two further changes to its policies, both aimed at improving safety for its users. First of all, Twitter tightened up the rules against making threats, extending the prohibition to “threats of violence against others or promoting violence against others”. Secondly, a new tier of sanction now exists for users who breach Twitter’s rules – in addition to previously existing options to ban an account or refrain from taking action, Twitter can now impose temporary suspensions. This innovation gives the company leverage in many cases, for example where multiple users begin harassing a particular person or group of people. In this case, the temporarily suspended accounts can also be unlocked after fulfilling certain conditions.

It should be mentioned that Twitter has been building up its anti-abuse features for a while now – for instance, back in December, it rolled out improvements to its blocking function and allowed users report abuse directed at others. In the following months it continued to improve its reporting functionality and even tripled the number of staff engaged in responding to reports.