I love Twitter, but there’s no denying it has long had a spam and troll problem. Tweet about a popular product or service, and you’ll often get weird replies from random accounts. Poke your head out and take a political stance, and anonymous trolls will try to cut you down.
Thankfully, Twitter is starting to address some of these issues and provide tools for regular accounts to block spam and abuse. You can now mute specific accounts or certain keywords, but what about all those anonymous, one off trolls? Well that’s where notification filters come in.
RELATED: How to Mute Someone on Twitter
One of the big problems with Twitter is how quick and easy it is to create accounts. There’s no point blocking someone if two minutes later they’re back with a new account. With notification filters you can set rules that automatically mute Tweets from certain kind of accounts. You can ignore Tweets from accounts:
You don’t follow. That still use the default profile picture. That haven’t confirmed their email. That haven’t confirmed their phone number. That don’t follow you. That have only been created recently.
None of these filters will affect accounts you follow, so you can implement them without fear of cutting off Tweets from people that interest you. Here’s how to implement them.
On the Website
Click the profile picture in the top right and then select Settings and Privacy. From the sidebar, select Notifications. Under Mute Notifications from People, check any of the filters you want to apply and click Save Changes.
In the Smartphone App
Open Twitter on your smartphone and go to your Notifications pane. Tap the Gear icon to go to the Notifications Settings screen.
Tap Advanced Filters.
And turn on the filters you want.
By using Notification Filters, you can stop all Tweets from certain kinds of accounts reaching you. You might miss the occasional genuine Tweet, but for the most part, only spam accounts and trolls don’t use their own profile picture or confirm their email address.
