Twitter says it now removes half of all abusive tweets before users report them

Twitter says more than 50 percent of tweets identified as abusive are now being flagged by its automated moderation tools first and taken down before a user reports them. Improvements in its machine learning model for identifying problematic tweets enabled the faster moderation, Twitter said.

Cracking down on abusive tweets has been an ongoing goal of Twitter’s. The company regularly talks about how “one of our highest priorities is to improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” as its earnings letter says today. Ongoing abuse has made Twitter an unpleasant place to be for many longtime and highly active users, so its ability to cut down on bad actors is important to the site’s usage and user growth.

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