Twitter just unveiled a new feature that will let everyone filter low quality notifications from bots and spammers. Twitter has had bullying issues in the past, and the company is now taking actions to make it a more welcoming place.
Twitter is wording this new quality filter as a tool to hide notifications from bots and duplicate tweets from spammers. But it could also be a way to prevent harassment from Twitter trolls before making a decision on an account ban.
If you want to activate this new filter, go to the Notifications tab in the Twitter mobile app, hit the Settings button and turn on “Quality filter.”
The company doesn’t say much about the algorithm behind this filter. “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,” Emil Leong wrote on the Twitter blog. This filter won’t affect your timeline as you’ve chosen to follow the people who appear in your timeline. Similarly, you’ll get notifications from people you follow or people you’ve recently interacted with.
This is a good move from Twitter. Twitter is a giant, open community, and without these tools, it could quickly turn into a hostile community. In other words, humans suck sometimes, and there are too many bots on Twitter.