Twitter adds new tweaks to help users report harassment

Users will soon be able to include multiple tweets in a single report

The Twitter logo displayed outside the New York Stock Exchange in November 2013 (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Twitter has introduced a new feature which could make it easier for users to report harassment.

Thanks to a tweak currently being rolled out, users will be able to bundle multiple tweets into a single abuse report.

This makes it quicker and easier for users to flag up a sustained trolling campaign, and provides more context to Twitter's user safety team, hopefully allowing them to resolve issues quicker and more effectively.

Writing on the Twitter blog, engineer Hao Tang said: "We want everyone on Twitter to feel safe expressing themselves. Behaviour that crosses the line into abuse is against our rules and we want it to be easy for you to report it to us."

Assuring users that "safety continues to be a top priority," Tang said more improvements to the reporting process will be coming "soon".

The feature is being introduced to iOS, Android and Twitter.com, and should become available to everyone over the next few weeks.

Twitter has faced tough criticism in the past for the harassment that takes place on its platform.

Some users have claimed the reporting process is cumbersome and can be ineffective, with Kevin Healey, a leading British autism campaigner, telling The Independent the company was failing in its "moral duty" to protect vulnerable users in an interview last year.

To their credit, Twitter has acknowledged these problems and is working to solve them - in a leaked 2015 memo obtained by The Verge, former CEO Dick Costolo said the company "sucks" at dealing with trolling and abuse

"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," he wrote.

Twitter has built up its blocking and reporting tools in the last couple of years, and claims to have refined its internal processes for dealing with complaints.

The company will be hoping this latest update will make sustained abuse campaigns much easier for users to flag up.