Twitter had to roll out the ‘report abuse’ button across all platforms after a UK activist was harassed for two days.
Be it the Android or iOS, or your desktop or mobile browser, Twitter has now made it easier than ever to report abuse by providing the ‘report abuse’ button across all these platforms. Unfortunately, Twitter had no easy way to report abusive tweets until a few journalists and a member of Parliament were harassed threatened with rape recently.
Harassment and abuse on social media sites such as Twitter, per se, has been a big issue. Mostly the abusers got away because the method of reporting such abuse was no easy feat. You had to go through a lot of clicks and pages to just report the abusive content to Twitter. Now, with the availability of the ‘report abuse’ button on people’s accounts and across all platforms, the whole process has become much convenient.
This new feature got its stimulus when Caroline Criado-Perez (@CCriadoPerez), a UK activist, successfully managed to lobby the novelist Jane Austen for a banknote. For the next two days, she was harassed and threatened with rape.
Due to this event and shortly after, a follower of hers launched a Change.org campaign to make the procedure of reporting abuse on Twitter easier and more accessible. The petition managed to get over 139,000 supporters and was a success. The petition highlighted the fact that female users don’t feel safe with their views on Twitter as these incidents usually go unnoticed. It demanded a zero-tolerance policy to be adopted by Twitter regarding harassment cases and make the platform more secure for women as they raise their voices.
Twitter announced to make the changes all-across platforms; in fact, Twitter had deployed the ‘report abuse’ button on iOS devices and mobile web before the petition. With the petition getting so many supporters, it was about time that Twitter made reporting abuse an easier process for all its users, regardless of the platform they use.
There are still some issues with the process, but it is a good first step in the right direction!