Twitter continues to be ‘toxic’ for women, Amnesty International says

Twitter continues to fail women over online violence and abuse, Amnesty International has said.

The online social media platform has implemented just one of ten concrete recommendations the human rights organisation made in a report entitled “Toxic Twitter” which it released two years ago.

Amnesty International said Twitter had not produced meaningful data to even gauge the scale of the problem.

Neither had it provided country-level breakdowns of user reports of abuse or abuse based on gender or race, it added.

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In 2018 Amnesty interviewed 86 prominent women in the UK and the US about their experiences on the social media platform which has 400 million users worldwide.

It also carried out online surveys among women in eight countries about women’s experiences of abuse or harassment on social media platforms more generally and its impact on women’s freedom of expression online as well as the psychological impact of online abuse and harassment.

It found that Twitter was a place where threats of violence and abuse against women are widespread and where inadequate remedies exist for those who experience such abuse.

In its follow up report, Amnesty International has excoriated Twitter stating that it had only implemented one of 10 recommendations that the organisation suggested to deal with online abuse.

It has improved the appeals process by offering more guidance to users on how it works and how decisions are made.

It has not published the data on the number of moderators it employs to deal with abuse, the types of training required and the average time it takes for moderators to respond to reports. Neither has it published the volume of appeals and their outcomes.

Amnesty International has judged Twitter’s attempts to provide clearer examples of what type of behaviour rise to the level of violence and abuse and what penalties Twitter will impose have been inadequate.

Amnesty International's co-director of technology Rasha Abdul Rahim said Twitter has made some progress, but is not doing enough to protect women users "leading many women to silence or censor themselves on the platform".

She added: “We have outlined clear, straightforward steps that Twitter can take to make its platform a safer place for women to express their views. Twitter can and must do more to protect women from abuse.”

Indian author and activist, Meena Kandasamy, said she had been subject to "racist and misogynistic abuse including rape threats".

She said Twitter needs to do more to clean up the platform and make it a safe place for women.

In response to Amnesty’s analysis, Twitter has acknowledged that it needs to do more.

However, the company said its combination of human moderation and use of technology, allows it to take a more proactive response to online abuse.

Twitter declined to publish information by country or region stating that such data could be open to misinterpretation and also give a misleading impression of the problem.

Amnesty International said it does not accept that Twitter cannot publish such information.