Twitter Is Reportedly Rolling Out A Keyword-Based Harassment Filtering Feature

Following Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones’ high-profile departure from (and subsequent return to) Twitter due to hate speech, and CEO Jack Dorsey’s own admission that the company hasn’t done enough to clamp down on trolling and abuse, the platform is reportedly working on a tool that will let users sweepingly filter out certain posts.

The keyword-based system has been in the works for about a year, according to Bloomberg, and would allow users to stamp out certain words that appear within their feeds, including swear words, racial slurs, and other insults. One of the reasons that Twitter has struggled to develop such a tool is because the very premise of its product is to enable users to publicly communicate with anyone else in the world.

Right now, users have the ability to to report offending users, though the forthcoming tool would present a more far more wide-ranging solution than simply blocking individual users. It could eventually come to moderate all kinds of content, according to Bloomberg

, including blocking hashtags that certain users may not wish to follow.

Back in February, Twitter announced the formation of the Twitter Trust & Safety Council in a bid to clamp down on bullying and hate speech, and has also consulted with other anti-harassment groups, according to Bloomberg, which reports that this issue has become one of Dorsey’s top priorities right now. If Twitter were to implement such a feature, it would follow in the footsteps of Instagram, which earlier this month rolled out the ability for users to moderate their own comments sections by filtering out certain words, and even turning off comments completely on a post-by-post basis. Instagram is testing out the new filtering features among celebrity users right now, and will eventually roll them out to everybody in coming months.