Twitter’s All –Out Battle Against Online Abuse And Harassment

The Women, Action and the Media (WAM) is one of the many groups which headed the #FBrape campaign against Facebook. The group is pushing the the social media giant to change its policy on cruel and insensitive content on their website.

WAM has now partnered with Twitter to further analyse how the microblogging service can be of help to monitor and eventually stop harassment on its site. The group also created an online form that would allow users to report harassment details that can be tracked and analysed, CNET reports.

According to WAM, they will escalate confirmed reports of harassments to Twitter and they will track Twitter's responses and actions to the different cases of gender harassments. By the end of their pilot stage, they will carefully study the data collected and will utilize the data together with Twitter to gain better understanding on how these harassments work and how they can improve responses to such problems.

Many women were already victims of Twitter threats and have taken the time and courage to report the harassment to Twitter. Unfortunately, they found themselves at the losing end for they were unable to prove the legitimacy of the threats they have received. Some reports apparently were not even answered back, Jezebel.com reports.

Twitter is also doing its fair share by working on its own policies after some of its members have also complained harassment. The social media company also updated its rules for users and has added more staff to monitor the issues.

The #FBrape campaign against Facebook was launched last year lead by WAM in collaboration with the Everyday Sexism Project and author-activist Soraya Chemaly. The campaign against violent sexist image in Facebook enticed 15 brands to pull their ads on the said social networking site. In answer to the campaign, the social media giant promised to work on its policies and has urged users to use their real names if they want to post cruel and insensitive campaign. As for Twitter, they have a launched a webpage that lists various groups it works with to battle online harassment and abuse, and other offensive contents and issues.