Twitter will now let you give more specific reasons when you're reporting tweets

Twitter is introducing a more granular way in which you can report tweets which share personal information. It will now let you report a tweet by going more specific as to why you are reporting the tweet. A lot of tweets may sometimes contain private information of someone, maybe shared without their knowledge. When you click on Report Tweet, you will be taken to a main menu followed by an additional menu for more context. This feature is expected to roll out today on the web as well as the app versions of Twitter. [caption id=“attachment_5905971” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] FILE PHOTO: People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo - S1AEUIXLWVAA[/caption] So say, for instance, you have reported a tweet containing an unsolicited phone number, then you can report the tweet as abusive or harmful. You are taken to another menu which asks you ‘How is this tweet abusive or harmful?’ You are then presented with a whole list of options. Selecting an option will lead to yet another menu, letting you further specify more aspects of why you are reporting the tweet. Twitter has covered options such as the tweet being disrespectful or offensive, including private information, including targetted harassment, threatening violence or harm and more.

This gives you a lot more control over why you would want to report a tweet. Yes, these many layers of granularity means you will have to click through more screens in order to report a tweet. But it’s good to see Twitter at least giving that option to its users. Twitter hasn’t said how the actions will be taken. Would reported tweets have different severity levels for being taken down, depending on what choices you select? Will tweets with certain selected flags be taken down first? Would the account be banned if many tweets from that account are reported? All this is information that hasn’t been revealed.