Twitter is testing a tool to zap hate speech

Problem: Twitter is clogged up with (mostly) dudes who like nothing better than to ruin people's days with hate speech, racial slurs, and even death threats. It's gotten so bad that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo spelled it out as a major barrier to the company's growth.

But a tweet by Silicon Valley blogger Anil Dash shows that Twitter is working on the problem with a filter that makes all that stuff invisible to you, quietly rolled out to some users in an iOS app update:

Well, that's an interesting & welcome addition, Twitter! (Was prompted about this on opening the app.) pic.twitter.com/Ka2VDvqwNf

- Anil Dash (@anildash) March 23, 2015

We don't how many users this is getting rolled out to, how Twitter determines which tweets are problematic, or when it's going to get to other platforms than just iOS.

But between this tool,and the recent addition of features to make reporting harassment to the authorities easier, Twitter is showing some signs of taking harassment seriously.