• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 26, 2017

Twitter had some explaining to do this week, after deciding not to police President Trump’s threats against North Korea.

While the taunts would normally have triggered Twitter’s anti-aggression policy, the company said their newsworthiness made them more acceptable.

“Among the considerations [when deciding what content to censure] is ‘newsworthiness’ and whether a Tweet is of public interest,” Twitter’s public-policy department explained on a tweet.

While this has “long been internal policy,” the social giant said it plans to officially update its “public-facing rules.”  

Admitting the discrepancy likely led to confusion among its community, Twitter’s policy team added: “We need to do better on this, and will.”

More broadly, Twitter said it has been succeeding in its efforts to curb trolls and other abusive users.

Year-over-year, Twitter is now taking action on 10 times the number of abusive accounts every day, according to a recent estimate by Ed Ho, general manager of consumer product and engineering at Twitter.

The platform is also limiting account functionality or placing suspensions on thousands more abusive accounts each day.

Regarding repeat offenders who create new accounts after being suspended for violations, Ho said his team has removed twice the number of such accounts over the past four months.

In addition, accounts that demonstrate abusive behavior are now limited for a time, which is producing results.

In fact, accounts put into this period of limited functionality generate 25% fewer abuse reports. Approximately 65% of these accounts are in this state just once, per Ho.

Showing new signs of life, Twitter recently reported strong user growth during the first quarter of 2017. The social giant said it added about 9 million new users -- making it the biggest quarterly bump in years. Analysts were pleasantly surprised by the rise.

Y-O-Y, average monthly active users jumped 6% from 319 million to 328 million, during the first quarter. Among other factors, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey attributed the rebound to better policing of trolls, bullies and other bad actors.

“We are seeing a significant decrease in the number of people experiencing abuse on Twitter,” Dorsey told investors on an April earnings call. Twitter is also doing a better job of rolling out new products and meeting the needs of average users, he added.