[rileymat]

Why is it so hard for twitter to implement some optional filter for this stuff?

You have a complete history of a users tweets and a record of how long the person has been active, number of followers, textual analysis of the tweets, block/mute status with respect to other people, whether you follow ect. It seems like it should be really easy for twitter to put messages into a spam/harassment folder, never to be seen by the target.

[ZoF]

Really easy?

...Really?

Edit: Not only would this alter a core and fundamental aspect of how Twitter currently operates but it would certainly be non-trivial to implement in an unobtrusive manner.

Who wants what blocked? Is there a generic 'spam/abuse' filter? Is it on by default? Are those tweets put into a spam/abuse section or entirely unviewable. What happens when someone sends a tweet that is blocked by the filter, are they notified?

Try to clearly define what metrics/identifiers you would use to determine a tweet is offensive and should be blocked and then call this implementation trivial.

[Estragon]

Federated twitter blocking where people can choose to outsource the blocking to people they trust would be pretty cool. Kind of like AdBlockPlus lists.

[needacig]

This exists: https://blocktogether.org/

[chris_wot]

You can farm out your actual tweets, farming out blocking sounds like an interesting idea!