After recent controversy brought the bad behaviour of ‘trolls’ to light, Twitter have finally implemented a ‘report tweet’ button, letting users fight abuse.
The fact that social media allows people to fully utilise their right to free speech is both one of the biggest benefits and hugest downfalls of such sites, that let users post summarised versions of their thoughts at the click of a button. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have allowed people to share their innermost whimsies, or deep-thinking philosophies easily, but unfortunately it’s ripe for misuse. With anyone and everyone with an account being able to post just about anything (provided that it’s 140 characters or less) Twitter is one of the largest perpetrators, but thankfully, the bigwigs at the site have wised up, finally providing a solution to the bad behaviour.
Twitter’s ‘report tweet’ button comes as a direct response to the hatred and abuse that many users experienced at the hand of so called ‘trolls’ (internet users who go out of their way to verbally attack others in a humiliating or demeaning way) after they took part in supporting the printing of a woman’s face (that of Jane Austen, no less) onto the British £10 banknote. However, this is not the first time that Twitter has come under fire for the way it seemingly supports this vitriolic abuse in the name of free speech with death threats being all too common on the social networking site.
Thankfully, the ‘report tweet’ button is now present on both the app and website forms of Twitter (visible in an image above), meaning that whether you’re using a mobile device, or a desktop, the option to point out wrongdoers to the Twitter support team is easily accessible. Previously, you would have had to jump through many hoops in order to get a user removed from the site, with an entire form of data required to be filled in (including a link to the offending tweet – which could have been deleted in the time it takes you to report the user).
Hopefully, this will go a long way to fixing the obvious problems of misuse that have plagued Twitter ever since it got popular all the way back in 2008, but that doesn’t mean that abuse will be completely ridden from the site. One obvious problem that could arise from this is that people may choose to report tweets of people they dislike simply to get them barred from the site, but Twitter may well have a larger team of moderators in preparation for this.
We’ll keep you posted once we know more.
Source: The Telegraph
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