The growth of abuse and hate speech on social media has been under the microscope lately, and Twitter in particular has been criticised for failing to curb antisocial behaviour on its platform.

Now, Twitter has unveiled a number of new measures that are aimed at combating online abuse, making it easier for users to hide content they dont wish to see and streamlining the process for reporting abusive posts.

Among the changes brought in is the ability to report abuse directed at other users. Previously, Twitter users could only report hate speech explicitly directed at themselves, but now users will be able to report abusive conduct directed at others, which both eases the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and should speed up the processing of reports.

“Because Twitter happens in public and in real-time, weve had some challenges keeping up with and curbing abusive conduct,” said Twitter in a statement on the changes. “We took a step back to reset and take a new approach, find and focus on the most critical needs, and rapidly improve.”

Twitters mute function will be expanded to include notifications, and enable users to mute keywords, phrases and even entire conversations if they dont wish to see notifications for them.

The company has also retrained its support teams with updated policies on abuse, and implemented an ongoing refresher program, as well as improving internal tools and systems with the hope of creating a more transparent and faster process.

The changes will be rolled out internationally over the next week or so, and will hopefully result in a marked decrease in abuse hosted on the social platform. Whether this change is enough to turn around Twitters image and rejuvenate its slowing user growth will remain to be seen, but every step taken to fight online abuse is a valuable one.