Twitter is testing changes to the way it handles reported tweets

Twitter has announced that it is testing a new method for reporting tweets, which it claims would make it simpler for users to report abusive or suspicious conduct. The solution, which is now being tested with a limited sample of users in the United States, simplifies the existing reporting procedure by eliminating the need for a person reporting a tweet to choose from a list of pre-selected descriptors of what rule the tweet is breaking. Instead, it will ask the user what happened in a "symptoms-first" approach to obtain more detailed information, according to the business.

The blog article utilized the scenario of a patient in an emergency room; instead of asking, "Is your leg broken?" the doctor instead asks, "Where does it hurt?" Asking someone to identify a specific condition or symptom, according to Brian Waismeyer, a data scientist on the health user experience team managing the new approach, isn't an effective method to figure out what's wrong. "What they're going to do well if they're walking in to get care is describe what's happening to them right now," he said of the patient with the fractured leg.

In a statement, senior Twitter UX manager Renna Al-Yassini stated, "What might be irritating and confusing about reporting is that we enforce based on terms of service breaches as specified by the Twitter Rules." "The great majority of what people are reporting falls into a much broader gray area that doesn't satisfy the particular requirements of Twitter infractions, but they're still reporting what they're seeing as very troubling and distressing." Twitter claims that by focusing on the person who reported the tweet, it intends to increase the quality of the reports it gets; the more first-hand information it can acquire, the more exact it can be in selecting how to treat a reported tweet.

Other than introducing additional grounds to report a tweet, such as spreading coronavirus disinformation and tweeting inaccurate information about elections, such as voting suppression, this is the first time in a long time that Twitter has made substantial modifications to its tweet reporting procedure. It added the opportunity for users to submit more data about tweets that were flagged for exposing personal information in 2019. The new reporting method will be rolled out to a larger audience in 2022, according to Twitter.