Users Can Now Easily Deal With Trolls, Abuses On Twitter

Twitter has made it easier for victims and witnesses of online harassment to report it. 

In a blog post, the short messaging service announced it would give its users more streamlined ways of reporting harassment, especially on mobile devices. Among the new features, the service will allow users to block others from looking at their personal profile information. 

The new tools will roll out to users in the coming weeks and right now it's available for a small group of Twitter's 284 million members. 

"We are nowhere near being done making changes in this area," Shreyas Doshi, director of user safety, wrote in a blog post announcing the news.

The company also promised further significant changes ahead as it grapples with the intense job of isolating abusive behavior on the network, without curbing free expression. 

"We are nowhere near being done making changes in this area. In the coming months, you can expect to see additional user controls, further improvements to reporting and new enforcement procedures for abusive accounts. We'll continue to work hard on these changes in order to improve the experience of people who encounter abuse on Twitter," the blog post read. 

Twitter's policies to prevent harassment had come under scrutiny this year after Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams, became the subject of abusive tweets in the wake of the actor's death, prompting her to temporarily quit the service, FT.com wrote. 

Twitter also noted that company did not believe that supporting free speech and preventing targeted abuse were "mutually exclusive", and added: "We have a very strong bias towards protecting free expression and keeping up content, and our rules also prohibit targeted abuse."