Twitter wants users to think twice before sending ‘offensive’ tweets

Twitter wants you to think twice before sending that profanity-laced tweet. The social network this week began testing a feature that prompts users who have written a tweet using “offensive or hurtful language” to reconsider before hitting the ‘send’ button. The experimental feature informs users who try to send a potentially vulgar tweet that their …

Twitter wants you to think twice before sending that profanity-laced tweet.

The social network this week began testing a feature that prompts users who have written a tweet using “offensive or hurtful language” to reconsider before hitting the ‘send’ button.

The experimental feature informs users who try to send a potentially vulgar tweet that their words are similar to those in posts that have been reported, and gives them the option to revise it or send it out.

The test will run for a few weeks, and will focus only on English-language tweets.

Twitter has long been under pressure to clean up hateful and abusive content on its platform, which are policed by users flagging rule-breaking tweets and by technology.

“We’re trying to encourage people to rethink their behavior and rethink their language before posting because they often are in the heat of the moment and they might say something they regret,” Sunita Saligram, Twitter’s global head of site policy for trust and safety, told Reuters.

Twitter’s policies do not allow users to target individuals with slurs, racist or sexist tropes, or degrading content.

The company took action against almost 396,000 accounts under its abuse policies and more than 584,000 accounts under its hateful conduct policies between January and June of last year, according to its transparency report.

Shares of Twitter were down 1 percent Wednesday morning, at $27.79.

With Post wires.

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