As Twitter's popularity has grown, so has the number of people who use it as a platform to abuse, threaten and generally be vile to strangers. Its great strength is also its great weakness: it is an incredibly democratic and easy way to access anyone else with an account, be they a national journalist, an Olympic diver, a politician, or a woman who has campaigned to get Jane Austen onto the £10 note.
Yesterday we saw the latter, Caroline Criado-Perez, drawing attention to the fact she had received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours" and said she had "stumbled into a nest of men who co-ordinate attacks on women".
Block And Ignore It's all to easy to say "block and ignore". I think people who do so genuinely mean well: it's a way of reaching out, saying that they empathise and trying to reassure you that you can easily make it go away. The problem is that you can't just erase the memory of some hideous comment that's been made to you, and even if you've blocked one of them it's a bit like bashing down mole hills. Another one will soon follow. I still remember vile tweets sent to me from years back, and I certainly haven't ever been subjected to 50 abusive tweets an hour. I can't imagine what that must feel like.
It's so often our instinct in life to say "there, there, it will be fine" when something bad happens, but often that just frustrates and angers further. If I've just fallen over and broken my arm I want some proper sympathy and to voice my hurt and upset, not for someone to say "there, there" and point out the obvious, that in a few months it may (or may not) have healed up properly.
Feeding TrollsWe also then come onto the issue of whether or not to "feed the trolls". The argument goes that if you don't engage they will go away and/or they're only sending the abuse to get a reaction. Both aspects of this might be correct, but it's also true that some will send continued abuse regardless of reaction, and even if you don't respond they will still have the satisfaction of knowing the tweet appeared in your @ mentions until they are blocked.
Further, why shouldn't you engage if someone sends you abuse? It may not be the most sensible strategy (who knows?), but if someone is unpleasant to me I don't just let it pass. I respond. In this case it's rather akin to victim blaming: we're specifically talking about a woman who has dared to have an opinion and who has successfully organised a campaign. She (and others who attempt to show her solidarity) are threatened with sexual violence. Why shouldn't they challenge the man, if it makes them feel in any way better? To say that they then bring subsequent abuse upon themselves just strikes me as wrong and deeply un-empathetic. We should unequivocally be telling the person who abuses that they are in the wrong, not the person who is receiving the abuse. It's a little bizarre to even need to spell that out.
It's Twitter's Fault It's very tempting to see the problem here as being the medium, rather than the people using it. To some extent it's true: Twitter has given us the ability to communicate instantly and easily in a way not previously available. But let's be clear: Twitter of itself does not
encourage this type of abusive behaviour. Hundreds of millions of people use it daily and manage not to send this kind of thing.
It is a human issue that some men feel threatened by women and think it amusing to launch off rape threats in response. To ditch your Twitter account in response is like getting rid of your telephone because you've had someone heavy breathing down the line. It's not the telephone's fault: it's the freak who's making the call. Telephones also facilitate billions of happy, useful, mundane and funny communications too. The problem here is societal, not digital.
Report Abuse ButtonPeople are rightly upset and frustrated at what is happening with the repeated abuse that is going on. Just because Twitter doesn't encourage the abuse, doesn't mean it can't do something to stop it. There's an online petition to get a "report abuse" button added. Like many others, I felt angry at what was going on yesterday, signed it and retweeted the link. None of us wants to feel impotent and to just ignore something like this. The existing "Report spam" button does not fit the problem and it ignores the fact that very real, upsetting, offensive
abuse, not spam, is the problem.
My attitude was a bit like my attitude to speed cameras. I don't tend to speed, so why should I be bothered by their presence? It's only people who send out abuse who have anything to be concerned about. It may genuinely help, in the way that I think speed cameras do have an effect on people breaking the law. With a little reflection, I realised that there are big practical problems with this approach, however.
It requires a level of policing by Twitter that is unlikely to happen without a hefty subscription fee. The following statistic demonstrates it clearly: the Guardian employs 12 full time moderators. Twitter would have to employ 24,000 to police with the same level of activity. They would have to be multi-lingual, or there would have to be different teams for different countries.
Moreover, do we
want 24,000 people monitoring our tweets? The scope for abuse is immense. If you don't like someone you report them for abuse in an attempt to get their account suspended. As a matter of principle, why should someone be the judge and jury over what it is acceptable to say or not? Rape threats clearly fall way over the unacceptable line. Does telling someone to "fuck off", or using the C-word? What would be the procedure for appeal if you disagree?
The beauty of Twitter, which is in fact a liberal dream fulfilled, is the ability for people to be able to communicate freely across most borders. The concept that what is said should be policed by a non-judicial authority is one that needs to be thought out very carefully indeed.
Twitter and the Police Given the statistics above, it is easy to see why, practically and above all commercially, Twitter prefers the "leave it to others to police" route. It does have a "report abuse" mechanism, but
I know from experience how slow and ineffective this method is. When I received tweets saying "YOU GAY FAGGOT BUM BOY - PERHAPS WE SHOULD KILL YOU INSTEAD." and "YES- MURDER YOU." Twitter did absolutely nothing instant. The report goes off to the US and they take about 2 weeks to action it - by which time the person had deleted his account. Hooray, that made me feel better.
Therefore Twitter falls back on the line that people must comply with local laws. Caroline Criado-Perez reported her abuse to the Police. Much of it no doubt did constitute offences under English law. The problem again is, however, limited resources. The Police must assess what threats are credible. They cannot investigate each and every vile tweet, with the best will in the world, nor could the courts process it. Much abuse comes from anonymous accounts - to "unmask" the operators is a difficult operation that involves going to court in California, followed by investigations and prosecution here.
It's a bit of an understatement to say that I did not
enjoy getting homophobic tweets threatening to murder me, but I would genuinely rather that my local force use its resources to combat other crime in my area than this non-credible threat on Twitter from someone who did not even know where I live.
Annual SubscriptionMany accounts that send abuse are set up mainly or solely for that purpose. Let's take this bright spark for example (I've deliberately picked a typical troll account, but by no means one of the most offensive ones that are using sexual violence in their comments):
And then look at the number of followers, the number of tweets, and the fact he still has an egg as his avatar. It takes minutes to set this up, using a (relatively) non-traceable email account such as Hotmail. There's a very good likelihood "Bruce" has a regular account from which he tweets normal things; he's just using this account to vent his hatred of women that he probably realises it isn't acceptable to do from an account where he could be identified. Chances are his girlfriend or mother might be a bit unimpressed, for a start.
A big issue with the "report abuse button" is that even if it operated properly and an account such as the above were instantly suspended, there would be absolutely nothing to stop "Bruce" from setting up another account a moment later.
Caitlin Moran has suggested she would happy to pay £30 a year to have a "safe network" in place of the existing Twitter. It would certainly be necessary to have a substantial subscription fee to employ the sizeable army of people working to police abusive tweets. It would also be necessary to have a fee to stop people from setting up repeated abuse accounts. The "report abuse" button idea is of itself of very limited use in stopping the problem. It gives us the important comfort that Twitter is doing something and acknowledges this serious issue, but for as long as accounts are free to set up and operate, it will solve little.
I'm sure others would agree with Caitlin that £30 is a reasonable fee if it stops misogynistic and other abuse. They would pay it. I probably would too, if push came to shove: I pay a lot more for my mobile subscription a year, or for my home internet.
Plenty, however, would not. We wealthy Westerners praise the role of social media in the organising of demonstrations, for example in the Middle East, yet many of these people would be shut out of using this democratic medium if there were a fee of this level.
One Off Registration FeeMy own suggestion is a little more modest. If each
new account had to pay a nominal one-off fee (say £3 or £5) on registration this would certainly help deal first of all with the multiple spam accounts that occasionally plague Twitter. It might also help cut down on repeat abuse accounts such as "Bruce" above. Some idiots will happily pay a fiver a time to abuse others, but the second they are blocked they cannot abuse that person again. They will have to pay £5 each time for the privilege of dishing out their oh-so-hilarious rape jokes.
This being Twitter, when I expressed this idea, I was instantly told that £5 is a lot to people in Africa, or indeed to some in the UK, and was accused of taking part in a "middle class platform". One of the people doing so was a lecturer whose latest photo in her stream was of a very expensive looking plasma screen. How I've missed Twitter the last month I've been away. Glorious.
Yes, I'm not actually a complete moron and realise that a one-off fee of £5 is a reasonable sum of money to some people. It is, however, a darn side less than an annual fee of £30 that Caitlin suggests, and would I think achieve a similar aim, without the army of censors working with all the disadvantages that involves. I also think that paying £5 (remember:
new accounts only was the suggestion) is fair enough, given the very real wrong of women receiving 50 abuse tweets every hour. Some people sadly won't be able to afford that, but for those who have access to the internet (by definition all Twitter users) most will.
Fighting BackI'm also realistic enough to realise that a £5 registration fee suggested by little PME on his blog isn't going anywhere... but it's an idea. The point is we are angry, we are frustrated, and we don't want this medium that we enjoy so much ruined by a group of Neanderthal dick-heads.
So, we come to the boycott idea. It is that on 4 August people stop tweeting for a day to register their protest that Twitter isn't taking this issue seriously enough. Will it help in practice? I've no idea (and some considerable doubts), but the fact that it's already
been reported on the BBC with quotes from Stella Creasy MP, suggest to me it's already being effective in at least highlighting the issue.
Some people will argue and say that it's giving in to the abusers, others will tell off those who fail to observe it. I probably won't be tweeting that day to show that I support those who have received such abuse: it's the least I can do. I don't expect it to suddenly change society and I'm not going to be chastising others with different views: do as you feel fit. As long as you agree that enough is enough, and this type of discourse is grotesque and unacceptable, you're on my team.
Finally we come to the other aspect of fighting back. It's registering our disgust, and showing our support for the people receiving the abuse. This
wonderful article in New Statesman by Caroline Criado-Perez highlights not just the trolls, but the amount of positive tweets she has received. It takes a moment to send her, or Suzanne Moore, or Helen Lewis, or any of the other women who regularly receive this type of abuse on Twitter a tweet of support. We can all do that.
I'm also aware that the guys sending the sexual abuse seem to get off on it when a woman responds. I've found that if another man challenges them they seem to go a bit quiet and they enjoy it less. Ask them how funny they'd find it if their mother, sister, wife or girlfriend were getting rape jokes every hour and see if they respond. They need to know other men don't think this is okay. Again, we can all do that.
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