Twitter Promises “Urgent” Action to Make the Social Network a “Safer Place”
I almost hate to write this article because I’ve been let down so many times by Twitter’s unfulfilled promises to deal with the trolls and Nazis and terrorists who use the service to advance their twisted goals.
But Twitter’s vice president of engineering, Ed Ho, posted a series of comments tonight that makes me hope again that they’ve actually woken up to how bad it’s gotten.
Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus and we are now moving with more urgency than ever.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
We heard you, we didn’t move fast enough last year; now we’re thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
We’ll be rolling out a number of product changes in the days ahead. Some changes will be visible and some will be less so.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
We’ll listen, learn and keep shipping until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
This week, we’ll tackle long overdue fixes to mute/block and stopping repeat offenders from creating new accounts.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
As we we roll out these changes, and other features that are new, we’ll keep you updated. We want your feedback and we are listening.
— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017
We shall see. Promises are good. Action is better.