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Twitter triples abuse team, knocks dox

Reports surge as CEO crackdown takes effect

Twitter has tripled the size of its abuse support team after the number of reports it handled increased five-fold in six months thanks to an expansion of harassment controls.

The company did not specify the headcount increase, nor the number of reports. El Reg has requested the information.

The number of reports may rise further with Twitter today increasing the types of abuse users can flag.

Tweeters including 'bystanders' can now report instances of personal information disclosures (doxing), impersonation, and self-harm, issues that were previously set out under Twitter's rules.

User services vice president Tina Bhatnagar said the time to respond to abuse reports has dropped.

“These investments in tools and people allow us to handle more reports of abuse with greater efficiency,” Bhatnagar says.

“So while we review many more reports than ever before, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the average response time to a fraction of what it was, and we see this number continuing to drop.”

“This week’s changes are the latest steps in our long-term approach, and we look forward to bringing you additional developments soon.”

The latest changes follow a leaked December memo from Twitter boss Dick Costolo chastising the company for 'sucking' at dealing with abusive trolls, in the following terms:

“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.

Costolo said at the time he was “ashamed” of its track record and took “full responsibility” for the failure.

“We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them,” he said. ®

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