Tuesday 07 February 2017 4:39 pm

Here’s how Twitter is planning to crack down on abuse and curb the prevalence of trolls

Twitter has long faced criticism over its apparent inaction in effectively tackling abuse on its platform.

And now Jack Dorsey's company has set out concrete steps for how it intends to cut down on abusive content, fast.

Twitter has previously made a number of tweaks in an effort to make it easier to report and clamp down on trolls, but its new changes aim to make abusive tweets less visible in the first place.

VP engineering Ed Ho has announced the following three features in a blog post, after saying the changes were coming last week:

1. Collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets

Pretty much what it says on the tin – the Twitter team has been working on a way to identify and then filter abusive and low-quality replies so you see the most relevant content. You can still seek out the offensive Tweets in question if you so choose.

2. Introducing safer search results

This will remove Tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and keep out Tweets from accounts you've blocked or muted. Again, this'll be discoverable if you want to find it, but it won't fill up search results.

3. Stopping the creation of new abusive accounts

It's going to try and track down those who have been permanently suspended and stop them simply making new accounts. Twitter says this should focus on some of the most prevalent and damaging forms of behaviour on the platform, notably accounts that are made solely to abuse and harass people.

The first change will be making its appearance on the site in the coming weeks, though Twitter hasn't provided exact timings for when the new features will be brought out.

Ho did though, say Twitter will "continue to roll out product changes", some visible, some less so. "With every change, we’ll learn, iterate, and continue to move at this speed until we’ve made a significant impact that people can feel," he said.