Twitter Launches ‘Safety Mode’ to Block Accounts for Harmful Language

Twitter Inc said on Wednesday that it will launch a safety feature that would allow users to temporarily block accounts for seven days for using harmful language or sending uninvited replies. Certainly, this newest test could provide some long-awaited relief for anyone facing harassment on the platform as we usually witness, so once the Safety Mode is turned on, Twitter’s systems will check the tweet content to assess the likelihood of a negative engagement and the relationship between the author and replier.

“Safety Mode is a feature that temporarily blocks accounts for seven days for using potentially harmful language — such as insults or hateful remarks — or sending repetitive and uninvited replies or mentions,” Twitter writes in a blog post. “When the feature is turned on in your Settings, our systems will assess the likelihood of a negative engagement by considering both the Tweet’s content and the relationship between the Tweet author and replier.”

While Twitter has taken several steps in the past to address its long-running harassment problem, Safety Mode is notable because it takes more of the burden off of the person being harassed. Instead of manually blocking, muting and reporting problematic accounts, the feature should be able to catch the offending tweets before they are seen.

Because it’s still in a relatively early stage, Twitter says it’s likely to make at least some mistakes. And users are able to manually review the tweets and accounts flagged by Safety Mode, and reverse faulty autoblocks. When the seven-day period ends, users will get a notification “recapping” the actions Safety Mode took. 

Earlier this year, Twitter announced that it was working on developing new anti-abuse features, including an option to let users “unmention” themselves from tagged threads and a way for users to prevent serial harassers from mentioning them moving forward. The company also hinted at a feature like Safety Mode that could give users a way to defuse situations during periods of escalating abuse.

Being “harassed off of Twitter” is, unfortunately, not that uncommon. When hate and abuse get bad enough, people tend to abandon Twitter altogether, taking extended breaks or leaving outright. That’s obviously not great for the company either, and while it’s been slow to offer real solutions to harassment, it’s obviously aware of the problem and working toward some possible solutions.