Twitter is all, “Yeah, we know we suck at dealing with online harassment but the police are so much worse.”
Even if you think Twitter isn’t quite where it needs to be as far as protecting its users (Ashley Judd sure doesn’t), you can’t say they haven’t been trying. They recently surveyed users about online harassment and also banned revenge porn. Their latest effort is one which will help a lot of people being continually threatened on the social network.
Here’s what Twitter had to say on their blog:
Today we’re starting to roll out a change that makes it easier for you to report threats that you feel may warrant attention from law enforcement.
Here’s how it works: after filing a report regarding a threatening Tweet directed at you, you’ll see an option on the last screen to receive a summary of your report via email.
Clicking the “Email report” button will send you an email that packages the threatening Tweet and URL along with the responsible Twitter username and URL and a timestamp as well as your account information and the timestamp of your report. Our guidelines for law enforcement explain what additional information we have and how authorities can request it.
Why is this so important? Serial harassers tend to delete threatening tweets before Twitter, and eventually law enforcement, can act on them. Additionally, we’ve seen countless reports of police having no idea how to deal with online threats (Brianna Wu can tell you her horror stories of dealing with Gamergate related harassment) regardless of the laws that exist. Twitter even has a “Guidelines for Law Enforcement” page which gives a concise lesson in the network but I guess it’s always good to have a hard copy to show them. Here’s what it will look like:
They also wrote on the post, “we’d like to acknowledge our safety partners, like the National Network to End Domestic Violence, for their feedback on this feature. Their input continues to be extremely valuable to us as we refine our reporting process so that it’s more efficient and useful.”
What do you think of this new idea?
(via Yahoo, image via Shutterstock, Copyright: Glovatskiy)
