Twitter has often come under fire from government agencies and human rights activist groups for not doing enough to deal with abusive or offensive tweets, Neowin reported. However, the social media platform now appears to be taking a major step toward curbing potentially harmful replies on Twitter. According to tipster Mukul Sharma, Twitter is testing a new feature that will encourage users to moderate replies with potentially harmful or offensive language.
More specifically, Twitter will give an edit button to remove words that could hurt feelings or promote bullying. While the implementation and its documentation have not been made public, it is likely that it will identify and flag some offensive words and notify respondents accordingly. However, users will be able to send feedback to Twitter if they don’t think their responses are offensive.
What Twitter is trying to do here is that it’s taking a more aggressive approach to curbing social media abuse. Twitter doesn’t remove tweets that contain abusive language but instead encourages users not to post them in the first place. A more powerful way to block offensive replies is to display a warning that posting some type of abusive language on Twitter could even land users in jail.
Twitter Edit button is here, but only for potentially abusive/harmful/offensive tweets for now.
Plus, Twitter is testing a like/dislike feature, which lets you view the stats (likes, comments, RTs) in the notifications section itself and lets you engage with the tweet right there pic.twitter.com/UovNjhdFek— Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings) June 20, 2022
Twitter is also testing an edit button for Tweet authors to allow people to fix spelling mistakes after they tweet. Another useful feature might show Like/Dislike buttons in Twitter’s notification area, giving users the option to like or dislike any tweet directly from the notification area.
It’s worth noting that Twitter has been testing the “Downvote” button with some users over the past few months, but the company clarified that it won’t let the public see the number of dislikes. It’s all about helping Twitter understand what type of content users want to see.
Now, Twitter is expanding the same functionality into Notifications, but it won’t be limited to giving users the option to like or dislike tweets. It will do even more, as Twitter is also working on letting users view statistics like the number of likes, retweets and replies directly from the Notifications section.
Twitter is testing the new features with some users, and it’s unclear when or if they’ll roll out publicly.