Twitter Gears Up to Protect Women from Online Abuse
After coming under heavy attack by the media, Twitter finally decided to take steps to check online abuse especially towards women. The Twitter Web site will now have a "report abuse" button, which is currently available in the Twitter app on iPhones, allowing users to stem the tide of the growing "trolls" online, reported Reuters.
Troll is a internet slang to mean a person who uses provocative language while posting messages or comments in online discussion forums, social media, etc. The only intention of such messages is to cause grief to a particular person or group.
The so-called "trolls" were getting more and more audacious with each passing day, especially towards women like Caroline Criado-Perez who has been subject to severe online abuse after she successfully campaigned to have a woman's face to appear on British banknotes. The campaign started after the Bank of England decided to remove Elizabeth Fry the only woman, apart from the queen, to have her face on a bank note in circulation.
The Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announced that Jane Austen would replace Elizabeth Fry as the new face of the 10 pound note. Elizabeth Fry was a social reformer who helped the poor and needy. She was sometimes referred to as the "angel of prisons" for her work to help the people living in deplorable conditions in prisons especially women. Meanwhile, Jane Austen is a 19th century novelists whose work "Sense and Sensibility" was adapted for a 2008 BBC television series.
Ms. Criado-Perez was one among so many women who come under attack by faceless abusers online who seemed to get away because there was no proper tracking mechanism in place to deter them in the future. That, however, was changing. The police arrested two men for making rape threats against Ms Criado-Perez. One of the arrested was suspected to have made rape threats against labor legislator Stella Creasy as well.
For its part, the British Division of Twitter apologized for the rape and death threats to several women. The general manager of Twitter UK personally apologized in his tweets to the women who have experienced abuse on Twitter.