Twitter is rolling out new tweaks to its service to help combat abusive trolls, including a tweak to its “mute” feature that will allow users to select a time period to put somebody in the virtual quiet corner.
As SlashGear.com reported Wednesday, in addition to silencing obnoxious accounts directly, users will be able to “mute” accounts and content for a predetermined period, “whether that’s for one day, one month, or indefinitely.”
[Of course, this also sounds like a great feature to temporarily shut up friends who are getting on your nerves with trash talk or excessive gloating before or after, say, a certain quarterback’s latest Super Bowl romp.]
Before now, muting an account left the offender silenced indefinitely, requiring you to go back into settings to manually un-mute the individual.
The upgrade will also allow users to filter out of their timelines tweets from “egg” accounts — those usernames that lack a photo or user-uploaded avatar and accordingly feature a cartoon egg for the profile avatar.
Egg accounts are often, but not always, the province of abusive trolls.
While Twitter’s moves may be welcome by tech-industry watchers and everyday users, it seems to have made no impression on Wall Street. Twitter’s beleaguered stock is down slightly on the day at time of publication.
• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.
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