Twitter is rallying after announcing a crackdown on abusive content

Twitter is up 2.62% at $18.40 a share after announcing it is launching a new set of features to combat hateful and abusive content.

Initiatives include hiding abusive tweets, preventing banned users from creating new accounts, and introducing a new "safe search" function, according to Twitter's engineering chief Ed Ho in a blog post on Tuesday. The decision comes after years of criticism that the social media company hasn't done nearly enough to combat rampant abuse.

Several prominent people have been banned, according to Bloomberg, including Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial British writer at the conservative website Breitbart News. Known as @nero on the site, Yiannopoulos was excluded for leading harassment of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. Martin Shkreli, the brash former pharmaceutical executive, was suspended earlier this year after he harassed a female reporter online.

Twitter is set to announce its fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, February 9, 2017.

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