Twitter announces more steps to combat abuse and hate

Twitter is broadening its campaign to clamp down on hate speech and abuse.

The company said Tuesday that it has begun identifying people who have been banned for abusive behaviour and will stop them from creating new accounts. It is also creating a "safe search" feature that removes tweets with potentially sensitive content and tweets from blocked and muted accounts from search results. The tweets will still exist on Twitter if people look for them, but won't appear in general search results.

Twitter is also singling out and collapsing potentially abusive and "low-quality" replies so only the most relevant conversations surface. These replies will also be accessible to those who seek them out, but Twitter is making them less visible.