A FEW WEEKS after admitting it’s bad at dealing with abuse (via a leaked memo), Twitter is taking another step towards rectifying that.

The service has been investing more resources into dealing with one of the biggest problems with the service: troll accounts and how easy it is to return after being banned, turning blocking and banning abusive users into a game of whack a mole.

Twitter’s Vice President of User Services, Tina Bhatnagar, said that this process resulted in “significant changes to our tools, processes and staffing behind the scenes,” tripling the size of the support team handling abuse reports.

The safety of our users is extremely important to us. It’s something we continue to work hard to improve. This week’s changes are the latest steps in our long-term approach, and we look forward to bringing you additional developments soon.

Starting today, it’s allowing bystanders to report abusive tweets instead of those being directly affected. This applies to impersonations, self-harm and the sharing of private and confidential information as well as abuse.

The company has been investing more resources into its support team, which deals with such queries. The size of the team has tripled, according to Bhatnagar, and the updates to its reporting process have resulted in “significant changes to our tools, processes, and staffing behind the scenes”.

The service will also add a number of new enforcement actions that violates its rules, as a way of deterring abuse comments and behaviour.

One of those measures could be an email or phone number verification system, according to The Verge. Those who are banned temporarily will be required to verify their email or phone number to use it again.

Twitter started introducing new features to help curb such behaviour back in December starting off by making it easier to flag tweets, as well as a blocked accounts page.

Before Twitter’s latest earning call, a leaked memo from CEO Dick Costolo, he told employees he was “frankly ashamed at how poorly we dealt with this issue during my tenure,” and vowed to deal with it.

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