Twitter UK Chief Apologizes to Female Victims of Online Abuse
on August 03, 2013
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The general manager of Twitter UK, Tony Wang, sent a series of tweets Saturday, apologizing to women who have experienced abuse on its site.
https://twitter.com/TonyW/status/363602538022436864
The social media company also posted an update to its blog Saturday morning, outlining changes it plans to make to its policies.
The developments come after UK lawmaker Stella Creasy and feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez were the targets of rape threats on Twitter, sparking a very public backlash against the social media company. Arrests were later made in connection with that investigation.
Several female journalists also received bomb threats on Twitter, including Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman, Independent columnist Grace Dent, Emma Barnett of The Daily Telegraph and Europe editor of Time magazine Catherine Mayer.
The threats triggered a petition calling for Twitter to modify its policies and make it easier to report abuse, and some called for boycotts. Creasy took it a step further though, calling the threats a "hate crime."
From the BBC:
[Journalist Caitlin] Moran has called for a 24-hour Twitter boycott on 4 August to try to get Twitter to come up with an "anti-troll policy". Labour MP Ms Creasy said: "This is not a technology crime - this is a hate crime. If they were doing it on the street, the police would act." She told the BBC she had been chasing Twitter for the past 24 hours but they had not yet responded to her. "I am absolutely furious with Twitter that they are not engaging in this at all," she said.
