After years of being accused of apathy toward the harassment and abuse that takes place on its platform, Twitter has so far marked 2017 with a stronger commitment to creating a safer environment for everyone.

Last week, Twitter announced a change to the way abusive tweets could be reported. Previously, if a user had blocked you, it would be impossible to report that user’s tweets as abusive or harmful, but that’s no longer the case.

Today Twitter introduced three more changes:

Stopping the creation of new abusive accounts:
We’re taking steps to identify people who have been permanently suspended and stop them from creating new accounts. This focuses more effectively on some of the most prevalent and damaging forms of behavior, particularly accounts that are created only to abuse and harass others.

Introducing safer search results:
We’re also working on ‘safe search’ which removes Tweets that contain potentially sensitive content and Tweets from blocked and muted accounts from search results. While this type of content will be discoverable if you want to find it, it won’t clutter search results any longer. Learn more in our help center.

Collapsing potentially abusive or low-quality Tweets:
Our team has also been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward. These Tweet replies will still be accessible to those who seek them out. You can expect to see this change rolling out in the coming weeks.

These changes follow a series of tweets at the end of last month by Twitter’s VP of Engineering, Ed Ho, who claimed the company is committed to “moving with more urgency than ever” to make Twitter a safer place. Ho tweeted again as today’s changes were announced and reinforced that these actions represent just the beginning, and more changes would be made to the service in the coming days.

Twitter announced steps it has taken to curb abuse on its service. The first is an extension of the mute feature. The ability to mute an account has been available for a long time, but Twitter is adding the ability to mute keywords, phrases, and conversations in notifications. The feature will begin rolling out world-wide to all users ‘in the coming days.’

With respect to reporting abuse, Twitter says:

Our hateful conduct policy prohibits specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Today we’re giving you a more direct way to report this type of conduct for yourself, or for others, whenever you see it happening. This will improve our ability to process these reports, which helps reduce the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and helps to strengthen a culture of collective support on Twitter.

Finally on enforcement, Twitter reports that it has retrained its support teams, is instituting refresher training, and has introduced new internal tools and systems for combating abuse.

Twitter revealed two new features for businesses that use direct messaging as a customer service channel – welcome messages and quick replies. Welcome messages are automated responses to customers who direct message companies. Quick replies present customers with a series of choices to reduce text input and, according to Twitter, are designed to work alongside welcome messages to speed up the customer service process.

Twitter’s Advertising Blog explains that:

These features are designed to help businesses create rich, responsive, full-service experiences that directly advance the work of customer service teams and open up new possibilities for how people engage with businesses on Twitter.

Earlier today, from the Vine company blog:

Since 2013, millions of people have turned to Vine to laugh at loops and see creativity unfold. Today, we are sharing the news that in the coming months we’ll be discontinuing the mobile app.

Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.

Vine had the best seconds-to-laughs ratio of any modern social network. Its constraints bred a unique form of creativity I’m sad to see go away.

See also, this story by Brian Feldman:

Most important, the engines of this creativity were groups poorly served by, and often shut out from, mainstream cultural creation and consumption. Vine wasn’t just dominated by teenagers — it was dominated by teenagers of color. Especially black teens, who created a disproportionate number of popular Vines and used the social network to demonstrate wit, intelligence, creativity, and comic timing that was rarely given a spotlight elsewhere. That included dance trends like the yeet.