Twitter is expanding auto-blocking abuse preventing “Safety Mode” feature

Twitter has announced that after months of testing they’re going to be expanding their auto-blocking “Safety Mode” feature to new English-speaking regions in order to gain more feedback. 

Previously, Twitter’s Safety Mode feature was only available to a select handful of about 1000 users. The feature allowed these selected users to experience less “unwelcome interactions” on the platform through the use of algorithms that would screen tweets coming your way and then help in autoblocking “spammy or abusive replies.”

Following the limited beta test, in which the feature managed to survive plenty of criticism and abuse itself, Twitter is now rolling this feature out on a wider scale, with roughly 50% of users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand reportedly being offered the feature. 

To go along with the rollout to more users, the social media giant has also detailed how prompts are being added to Safety Mode in order to help users identify and prevent potential unwanted interactions. 

Speaking to The Verge, a Twitter spokesperson, Tatiana Britt, explained that “our technology will now proactively identify potentially harmful or uninvited replies, and prompt people in the beta to consider enabling Safety Mode. This update further reduces the burden on people dealing with unwelcome interactions.”

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1493669586666930181

While Safety Mode will now see much broader adoptions thanks to this expansion, it’s still unclear when the feature will be rolled out in beta globally or launched fully for all users to utilize.