Twitter Begins Testing User Complaint Bot

Twitter has begun testing a rudimentary customer support bot, enabling the @support account to provide automated replies to user questions and complaints.

The new user support bot was officially released by Twitter this Wednesday according to the International Business Times but is still in its experimental phase. Twitter reportedly plans to test how the bot interacts with their current users and adjust further iterations of the bot accordingly. BuzzFeed tested the bot but discovered that for now, it was mostly only capable of redirecting users to Twitter’s website where they could fill out a complaint form.

Although quite basic at the moment, the bot has become a handy tool for users to report behavior that breaks the website’s terms of service as it easily allows users to report abusive tweets and accounts. The bot currently focuses on five main categories which are: Accounts, Abuse, Impersonalization, General and #TwitterTips. Engadget reports that the abuse category is the most well-developed category so far.

A twitter spokesperson discussed the new bot saying, “We’re testing a new @Support DM tool to make it easier for people to get help with certain support issues, directly on Twitter. This is a very early test and will be limited in scope for the time being.” The company has not yet announced when the bot will be fully functional and are still gathering information to prepare the bot for full release.

This isn’t Twitter’s first step towards bot operated abuse reporting, last month the company began using IBM’s Watson AI to crack down on abuse on the platform. Watson will use its ability to interpret natural language and analyze images in order to attempt to identify and crack down on abuse on the platform, which Twitter has notoriously failed to do so far.