Twitter insists safety is number-one priority at UK upfronts
Twitter announced 10 “innovations” that it has launched or is currently trialling on its platform this year, including Safety Mode to combat online abuse and promote brand safety.
IAB UK hosted Twitter’s upfront this morning, with a presentation detailing 10 new products in 10 minutes. It was so condensed the social media platform played it for the audience twice.
Brand safety and online abuse are major concerns for advertisers and Julia White, senior partner manager at Twitter told attendees: “Twitter brand-safety means personal safety. And we believe that the public conversation should be healthy, which means safe, free from abuse, harassment, and misleading information.
“This is our company’s number one priority. We are committed to having products that protect, policies that lead and partnerships that drive industry-wide change.”
One of those new products is Safety Mode, a new feature that aims to reduce disruptive interactions on the platform. When Safety Mode is switched on in Settings, it automatically detects and blocks abusive or spammy interactions for seven days, White explained.
“Our systems consider both the Tweets, content, and the relationship between Tweeter and replier when making the judgment call whether a Tweet is spammy or abusive,” she added. “But we do sometimes get it wrong – you can always turn off auto-block in settings, if you like.”
Safety Mode is currently available to a small feedback group, before being rolled out to the rest of Twitter.
Other products announced at the upfronts included opportunities for monetisation on Twitter like Spaces, Super Follows and Tips.
With Spaces, users can start and contribute to audio conversations on Twitter. The company said it is working towards a way to charge entry for specific audio conversations in future.
BBC’s Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK, Dazed magazine and the Gay Times and were pointed to as examples of media brands that have used this tool effectively in the past.
Super Follows allows Twitter users to earn revenue from the number of their followers and followers can gain bonus Tweets and exclusive content from “super following” someone.
The Tips icon lets you send someone a tip on a banking platform of your choosing and Twitter is looking into expanding this into charitable donations as well.
Additional tools such as Topics, Communities, Emoji Reactions, Edge to Edge Media, Revue and Twitter Blue were discussed.
Topics allows users to follow their interests, and there are currently 7,300 topics in 9 languages.
Communities gives users the ability to create and co-host groups whose conversations are visible to all users, but you are only allowed to participate if you are invited to the group.
Twitter is bringing in five new emojis to add to your reactions to Tweets.
Edge to Edge media gives users the option to display and customise photos or videos across the width of a feed.
Twitter recently acquired Revue which lets Twitter users link their newsletters in their bio.
Twitter Blue is being trialled in Canada and Australia and for a monthly subscription fee users can have an “almost edit button”.
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