Facebook Inc. has bolstered its efforts to reduce the amount of bullying that occurs on the platform with a slew of new anti-bullying tools.

On Tuesday, the company announced that it intends to give people more control over what they see and how they interact with people to counter harassment. It’s no secret that Facebook and other social media platforms have become hives of bullying, especially among teenage users.

“We’re introducing a way for people to hide or delete multiple comments at once from the options menu of their post,” said Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety. For busy posts, bulk deletion can act like the atomic bomb of troll comment killing. She added that Facebook also intends to find ways to block offensive words from comment boxes, although this is still in the testing stage.

Another feature announced is what might be called a “snitch” function, in the best possible way one might tell on others. As people often don’t use the report function on the platform, other users will now have the ability to report someone on the victim’s behalf. As always, Facebook will review the comments.

Since chaos could ensue when giving people the right to help out on someone’s behalf — perhaps when help is not always needed — Facebook has also made it possible for people to appeal if their comments have been taken down. In the past, Facebook offered such appeals only for photos and videos that had been removed. Users can also appeal if they’ve reported something and it didn’t get removed. Facebook will look at that content for a second time.

These new features are mostly to protect private individuals who have suffered from harassment, although Facebook said public figures will also have similar protections. “In the coming weeks, we will further expand our policies to better protect public figures against harassment regardless of age,” said Davis. “For example, severe attacks that directly engage a public figure will not be allowed under the new policy.”

The new features will roll out for desktop and Android first and iOS will follow.

Image: Blondinrikard Fröberg via Flickr