Twitter's European boss says it has done more to combat online trolls

Twitter's most senior employee in Europe has said that its strategy to reduce the amount of abuse on the platform is working. The comments came in a Boxing Day interview with The Independent.

Bruce Daisley, who was recently promoted to vice president of direct sales for Europe, told The Independent that "the measures we've taken correlate directly with a reduction in the amount of bad behaviour on the platform."

Daisley explained that "if someone is behaving in a way characteristic of a bad actor, we send them a phone verification. That allows us to tell the user that what they do here exists in the real world. It normally acts as a stark reminder. Secondly, it allows us to see whether that user has already got other accounts set up on their phone that have been suspended."

Twitter had admitted in the past that it has an abuse problem. Former CEO Dick Costolo said in a leaked internal message to staff that "we suck at dealing with abuse" and pledged to do more.

But Twitter's trolling problem hasn't gone away. In fact, it's now front page news. The Independent is running its interview with Daisley on its front page: