For years, Twitter Inc. has been facing an uphill battle in trying to keep abuse off of its social network, but thanks to some new features and strategies, the company said today, it has made significant progress over the last six months.

Ed Ho, general manager of consumer product and engineering at Twitter, said in January that “making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus,” and shortly afterward the company announced several new features aimed at fighting abuse. Those included better systems for blocking repeat offenders, an opt-out safe search feature that hides “potentially sensitive content and Tweets,” and an auto-collapse feature that hides low-quality responses in conversation chains.

In a new blog post today, Ho said those features and other new strategies have led to “significantly less abuse on Twitter today” than there was six months ago. According to Ho, Twitter takes now action against 10 times more abusive accounts each day than it did a year ago, and its new systems automatically remove twice the number of repeat offenders attempting to create new accounts. Ho also said that Twitter moderators continue to manually monitor content to keep the site’s policies up to date.

One strategy that seems to be working for Twitter is the site’s efforts to inform problematic users that their Tweets are inappropriate. When user accounts are temporarily limited for abusive Tweets, Twitter now explains why, and according to Ho, this has led to a 25 percent reduction in abuse reports for those accounts. Ho also said that 65 percent of the user accounts that are limited in this way never have to be limited again.

Better personalized quality controls have helped users avoid abuse by giving them the tools to limit the content they see. According to Ho, blocks following @mentions from accounts that users do not follow are down 40 percent.

“These numbers will vary, but the approach is having a positive impact,” Ho said. “We have consistent harassment definitions and policies that apply to everyone. However, people define abuse differently, so using these new tools, every person has control of what they see and experience on Twitter.”

Although Twitter’s stats appear to show that the company is making progress toward fighting abuse, the site still has plenty of problems. Ho believes that Twitter still needs “more improvement, transparency and speed,” and he said that the company will continue working with industry experts, academics and other partners as it strives to make Twitter “a safe place for free expression.”

Photo: Twitter