Twitter partners with 40 groups to cut down on harassment

On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it's taking more steps to be a friendlier, safer place by forming the "Twitter Trust and Safety Council," a partnership with 40 anti-harassment advocacy groups.

"[Our purpose is] to ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies," the council's mission statement reads. "With hundreds of millions of Tweets sent per day, the volume of content on Twitter is massive, which makes it extraordinarily complex to strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power. It requires a multi-layered approach where each of our 320 million users has a part to play, as do the community of experts working for safety and free expression."

Dealing with online abuse isn't a new issue for Twitter, and the formation of the council isn't the first step Twitter has taken to curb harassment lately.

In December, Twitter revised its stance on banning abusive users. Under the new guidelines put into place, Twitter users "may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism" and "may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others." Just last week, Twitter revealed it had shut down 125,000 accounts related to ISIS.

While Twitter has had this problem for a while, it looks like Twitter is ramping up its efforts as it realizes how big of an issue harassment can be. Twitter iOS app developer Brandon Carpenter, for example, found himself on the receiving end of many angry tweets when he defended Twitter's idea for changing up its timeline. It seems that although the company is aware of the problem, even its employees are sometimes surprised when experiencing it firsthand.

You can see the entire list of the members joining Twitter's Trust and Safety Council below.