Twitter is letting users to create a public list of abusive accounts they have blocked.
Users are now able to export their own blocklists, or import other people’s – making it easier to expose users who are potentially offensive, aggressive, or just downright annoying.
To retrieve the list or import another user’s, people must visit the settings area on Twitter.com, select the advance options menu, and click import or export from the dropdown menu.
The move will likely be welcomed by communities who are often targeted by Twitter trolls, such as feminists and LGBT people.
Blocking an account stops trolls from viewing a user’s profile, sending them mentions or interacting with them in their feed. Until now each account had to be blocked individually.
The new feature forms part of Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo’s pledge to help users protect themselves and deal with being attacked and harassed by trolls – a common problem for certain users on the social network.
“This feature is yet another step towards making Twitter safer for everyone and will be available to some of our users starting today and all users in the coming week,” said Twitter user safety engineer Xiaoyun Zhang in a blog post.
Twitter also lets users to mute accounts, which does not block them from viewing their feed, but does stop mentions from troll accounts showing up on their timeline.