Twitter Might Let You Use Keyword Filters To Curb Online Harassment

For the last three years, Twitter has worked to improve the safety of users by creating and adapting its blocking policy and tools. Now, the social network is reportedly looking to create a tool that would allow users to search for certain words they find offensive and block those messages.

Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, reports that Twitter has been discussing ways it can more effectively assist users in blocking harassing and offensive Tweets, including the use of a keyword search function.

The tool, which has been in the works for more than a year, would allow users to set filters for events, conversation topics, or individual words they don’t want to see in their feeds.

The feature will be an individual moderator of sorts: Twitter won’t be preventing anyone from sending messages that contain offensive content, rather it simply blocks users who don’t want to see them from seeing them.

Filtering of the Tweets would be in addition to Twitter’s other tools, such as “Mute,” which allows users to avoid seeing tweets from specific accounts.

A rep for Twitter declined to comment on the possible tool, Bloomberg reports.

Twitter Said to Work on Anti-Harassment Keyword Filtering Tool [Bloomberg]