Twitter today offered an update on how its improvements to user safety and its newer anti-abuse measures are having an impact. The company declined to share any hard numbers related to abuse on its network, including how many abuse reports have been filed, or the number of actions it’s taken, for example, noting instead across the board percentage increases on things like account suspensions, implementations to limit abusers’ account functionality, and the further results of those actions.
The report comes only days after a damning article from BuzzFeed painted a picture of a social network still afflicted by a systemic abuse problem, in which it described Twitter’s anti-harassment controls as a “largely cosmetic solution” and its algorithmic moderation systems as not as effective “as the company would like to think.”
The truth is that BuzzFeed and Twitter are both right. Twitter has implemented a number of anti-abuse controls that didn’t exist in the past, which are having some impact on Twitter’s abuse and remediation metrics. But BuzzFeed is right in calling out the network for not having done enough to actually curb the problem.
