The company wasn't clear about how the test will work, but that's intentional when publishing the details could theoretically skew the results. Twitter is keeping itself accountable by seeking approval from university ethics committees and submitting its strategy to the Open Science Framework. All results will be anonymized (there's no risk of being singled out), and they'll be published in an academic journal.

There's no guarantee this will work, of course. A determined abuser could just ignore the rules and hope that Twitter fails to catch them (which, let's be honest, happens often). A Russian bot operator certainly isn't about to have a change of heart. However, this might dissuade 'casual' abuse by people who may only be dimly aware that there could be consequences for hurling insults and threats. As it is, this is just one part of a broader solution that includes better enforcement and technology -- there's no one obvious fix.