Twitter adds new filters to tackle trolls

In a fresh bid to tackle trolls spewing hateful content on its platform, micro-blogging platform Twitter has added filters to mute unwanted tweets from a user's feed.

These filters are added to the ones Twitter released in March this year. They let you mute users whom you don't follow, those who had a default profile photo, those who hadn't confirmed their email or those that hadn't confirmed their phone number.

To enable these filters, a user must access the 'Advanced filters' option from the 'Settings' on the 'Notification' timeline.

"If your account receives a lot of sudden attention, we may insert a notification in your Notifications tab inviting you to adjust these filters to give you more control over what you see," said Twitter in a blog post on Tuesday.

The new filters to mute certain accounts along with the features to mute words or phrases provided by Twitter would enable a user to hide disturbing posts from their feed but don't eliminate such content from the platform entirely.

Twitter is reportedly augmenting the new filters with machine learning. 

The moment Twitter detects that accounts are repeatedly tweeting at accounts that they don't not follow, or engaging in unspecified other activities likely to signal abuse, the company will temporarily limit their access to the platform.