Twitter Is Failing To Protect Women's Rights Online

According to a new study by Amnesty International and Element AI, Twitter is an insecure place for female politicians and women journalists. Online abuse is even more serious for black women. Women regularly receive "abusive tweets" and "problematic tweets" on Twitter.

According to the agency, "Abusive Tweet" is a tweet that violates Twitter's online rules, including life-threatening, gendered, and racial threats. "Problematic Tweet" is a tweet that has offensive, racial or gender bias but is not abusive. For example, "Be a good girl ... go wash dishes" is called a "problematic Tweet".

To research the issue, volunteers and the team examined more than 288,000 tweets referring to 778 female politicians and journalists in the United States and Britain in 2017. Of these, up to 7.1% of the tweets sent to these women were "abusive" and "problematic". As a result, they found out that women receive harmful tweets every 30 seconds.

In October, Twitter apologized for failing to stop the threat from the pipe-bomb suspected Cesar Sayoc sent to Rochelle Ritchie (former press secretary of Congress). Twitter has been the focus of much online abuse and harassment against women, but it has not done good enough to prevent these incidents, and this leads to unfortunate consequences.

Both free and conservative women are targets for online abuse. Women from Asian, Latino, Black or mixed races are likely to be attacked, abused and harassed 34% more than white women. In particular, black women were targeted for threats, criticism and abuse 84% higher than white women.

The report said that abusive women should not appear and exist on any social networking platform. Twitter is obliged to protect the human rights of each of its users. This means that it must create the safety and security of the women who use it. Women should not feel fear while using social network.

Twitter uses both computers and humans to check for abusive and disruptive tweets that violate the online rules of the platform. Twitter says it is their responsibility and they will do their best to reduce the abusive and disturbing tweet on their platform.

Vijaya Gadde said that he is very enthusiastic about people discussing problematic tweets on Twitter, attracting the attention of many people to care about this incident. The company is also committed to improve the security of the platform, create a cleaner and safer environment for users, and enhance Twitter’s health.

In his view, Twitter's health is judged on the quality of the debate, thought and talk in a positive, healthy and contributing way. On the other hand, negative, harmful and manipulative conversations will diminish the health of the platform.

Researchers also point out that there are certain limitations in the course of the study. Tweets that have been researched include specific industry tweets. It does not include deleted tweets or accounts that are locked or suspended in 2017.