You can now flag abusive Twitter accounts by reporting multiple tweets at once

Twitter's processing for reporting abusive accounts has long been criticized as being clunky and ineffective. Until now, users who are subject to harassment have had to report every abusive tweet individually. Today, in a long overdue move, Twitter will allow you to flag abusive accounts by attaching multiple tweets to your report as evidence. "This update makes it easier for you to provide us with more information about the extent of abuse and reduces the time it takes to do so," engineer Hao Tang wrote in a blog post. "That added context often helps us investigate issues and get them resolved faster."

It's been more than a year since former CEO Dick Costolo acknowledged to employees that the company "sucks" at dealing with abuse — a problem that has made it even harder for Twitter to grow its user base. Since then, the company has taken some concrete steps to improve, including hiring more people and adding new reporting tools. But many targets of harassment complain that little has changed — and the last time Twitter talked about safety "improvements," it had actually just rearranged paragraphs in its terms of service. Today's update is more substantive, but it remains to be seen whether more thorough reporting leads to action.

• SourceTwitter