If you're about to send off a particularly nasty and scornful Tweet, and Twitter prompts you to tone it down a bit before sending, would you take the advice? The idea of a minor wrist slap stopping online abuse may sound like wishful thinking, but Twitter has some promising statistics that suggest it will actually do a lot of good for the social platform.

Twitter's Plans for a Slight Scolding for Bad Tweets

As outlined in a post on the Twitter Blog, the social media platform is tweaking its warning when it detects someone sending a Tweet that contains some no-no words.

This feature may sound familiar, and it's because this feature initially rolled out back in February 2021. However, it didn't work as well as Twitter hoped.

Related: Twitter Relaunches Warning That Urges Users to Rethink Rude Replies

While the feature could detect bad words in a Tweet, it didn't consider the context. For instance, it didn't pick up on sarcasm, and friendly banter was flagged as potentially abusive.

Not only that, but it didn't have a good time with people using the words without meaning harm, especially by the affected people who want to discuss social inequality without Twitter wagging a finger at them.

As such, Twitter is now rolling out an improved model that should cover the above bases. But honestly, how useful will this feature be? Won't people who want to hurt people tap through the warnings and send the Tweet anyway?

It's by no means a foolproof way to prevent abuse on Twitter, but the company has statistics to suggest that it does do a lot of good. Through experiments, it found that 34 percent of people either rewrote or deleted the Tweet after a warning. Not only that but the people who Twitter warned ended up writing 11 percent fewer abusive Tweets overall.

As such, while this new feature definitely won't weed out those who deliberately and knowingly spew hate, it does seem to work well for those who type out a message in the heat of a moment. The wrist-smack tells the user, "is this Tweet really worth sending?" and to some, the answer is no.

Taking the Bitter Out of Twitter

Twitter has its good spots, but it also has its fair share of hate. Now, the company is improving its abuse warning feature, and the test results are promising.

Twitter has a big job ahead of it if it wants to curb the abuse problem on its platform. Recently, English soccer teams performed a four-day blackout to protest against the abuse their players get.