Twitter Rolls Out Quality Filter Feature For All Users

Twitter has announced that it has begun rolling out what it calls a Quality Filter feature for all of its users. The new feature allows users to filter their notifications in order to only see mentions from people that they’re following.

“Last year we began testing a quality filter setting and we’re now rolling out a feature for everyone. When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior,” Twitter explained on its blog.

When the new Quality Filter is enabled, it will filter out duplicate tweets or content that appears to be automated. The user won’t be able to see those tweets from their notifications or anywhere else on Twitter.

It won’t filter content from people that the user is following, nor will it filter out any recent interactions that the user may have made with an account that they’re not following. Users can turn Quality Filter on and off at any time in the notifications settings.

The Quality Filter may not be a solution to remove abusive tweets from Twitter, but it does seem like a first step in the right direction. Perhaps it will deter users from spewing hateful tweets knowing that it won’t even be seen by the recipient. The only problem with this new filtering feature is that it may hide mentions that a user may want to see, as pointed out by Recode.

Twitter was recently under fire for not taking more steps in combating hate, harassment and bullying. Just last week, BuzzFeed News published an article criticizing Twitter’s failure to stop harassment on the site.

“We feel there are inaccuracies in the details and unfair portrayals but rather than go back and forth with BuzzFeed, we are going to continue our work on making Twitter a safer place,” the company said in response to BuzzFeed’s article. “There’s a lot of work to do but please know we are committed, focused, and will have updates to share soon.”