New Twitter Updates Let You Block Words and People

The estimated reading time for this post is 4 minutes

Twitter can be a helpful source of breaking news, social insights and inspirational quotes, thought it does have its flaws. Twitter can also be annoying, with troll accounts ready to pounce on tweets using vile replies. The site can also be the source of spoilers, if you log on before you’ve had a chance to watch your favorite show or sporting event.

The latest updates to Twitter may solve those problems, making the site a more pleasant place for you. You can block anonymous accounts from appearing in your Notifications. You can also block keywords so that tweets containing those words do not appear in your Twitter stream.

Blocking Accounts from Appearing in Your Notifications

While Facebook may seem like a gathering of friends and family, Twitter often seems like an unfamiliar city, filled with strangers who could be friendly or menacing. Because your tweets are public (unless you’ve restricted your account), anyone can see them and respond.

You may get positive affirmations of your tweets, or engage in interesting conversations with others and make useful connections. Or you may get mentioned in vicious tweets from random accounts that aren’t associated with a person or business.

Everyone who signs up for Twitter is assigned an egg as a profile photo until a different photo is added to the account. Often, though not always, egg accounts are owned by spammers who set up anonymous accounts. Those “egghead” accounts can be blocked so they don’t appear in your Notifications.

Updates to Twitter now let you control which accounts appear in your Notifications. You can block Notifications from anonymous accounts and from those who haven’t added profile picture.

You can also block accounts that don’t have a verified phone number or email account. Anyone can set up a Twitter account using a fake email address and a random profile picture. But faking a phone number is more of a challenge.

By blocking anonymous accounts, you won’t see tweets in your Notifications from these accounts that mention you.

How to Block Anonymous Accounts

You can block anonymous Twitter accounts in Notifications. Click Settings, then choose which accounts to block.

You can block Notifications from accounts:

• you don’t follow
• who have a default profile photo (a Twitter egg)
• who haven’t confirmed their email
• who haven’t confirmed their phone number

What You Need to Know About Blocking Accounts from Your Notifications

If you haven’t taken the time to add a profile picture on Twitter, now would be a great time to do so.

If your account shows an egg as the profile photo, you may be blocked from Notifications in many accounts.

Also take the time to add a phone number to your account and confirm your email address. You can set up two-step password verification while you’re adding your phone number and email address, to protect your account from hackers.
[note] Don’t miss How to Use 2-Step Verification for an Extra Layer of Password Protection [/note]
By blocking accounts from Notifications, you won’t have as much interaction on Twitter. You’ll be blocking not only trolls, but also those who haven’t taken the time to add a profile picture or link a phone number or email address to their accounts. Not everyone who hasn’t added a profile photo nor a phone number/email address is a Twitter troll.

If your goal is to have as much interaction on Twitter as possible, and you haven’t received mean tweets, then you may not want to block accounts.

You can still block specific accounts from appearing in your Twitter stream and from mentioning you. This update prevents you seeing anonymous accounts in your Notifications.

Muting Keywords

Twitter is now letting you block keywords from appearing in your stream. You can mute words temporarily or permanently. If you don’t want to see political tweets ever, for example, you can block political keywords.

[tip] Also see How to Fix Your Frustrating Facebook Feed (Without Unfriending Anyone) [/tip]

Perhaps you’d prefer not to be spoiled about the outcome of a sporting event, awards ceremony, or episode of your favorite TV show. You may be avoiding Twitter so you don’t see a tweet revealing information you’re not ready to know.

Now you can go on Twitter to see tweets about other topics without being spoiled. You can mute keywords temporarily, until you know the outcome and have a chance to watch your recorded shows.

Twitter lets you mute words, phrases, usernames, emojis, and hashtags. Muting is available for all languages that Twitter supports.

How to Mute Keywords

Click on your profile photo to show a drop-down menu. Choose “Settings and Privacy.” Choose “Muted Words” in the menu on the left.

Add the keywords you would like to mute. You can choose from muting keywords in your Notifications, Timeline or both.

You can also choose how long you want the mute to last:

• forever
• 24 hours
• 7 days
• 30 days

This update is rolling out so if you don’t have the update yet, you may only be able to mute keywords from your Notifications section. After the update, you will be able to mute the keywords from your Twitter stream and choose the time period you would like the mute to be effective.

Your Thoughts

Will you be blocking anonymous accounts from your Twitter Notifications? Will you be muting keywords from Twitter? What updates would you like to see from Twitter?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!

* Twitter Phone image (edited) courtesy of Esther Vargas via Flickr and Creative Commons