Twitter users to get ability to mute words and conversations

New tools aimed at helping users avoid seeing abusive threads

After nine years, Twitter users will finally be able to mute specific conversations on the site, as well as filter out all tweets with a particular word or phrase from their notifications.

The much requested features are being rolled out today, according to the company. Muting conversations serves two obvious purposes: users who have a tweet go viral will no longer have to deal with thousands of replies from strangers, while users stuck in an interminable conversation between people they don't know will be able to silently drop out of the discussion.