Women are abused every 30 seconds on Twitter


By MYBRANDBOOK


Women are abused every 30 seconds on Twitter

 

Now a study revils that how is the social network toxic, if you are a women. According to the report by Amnesty International and global AI software company Element AI, female journalists and politicians were abused every 30 seconds on Twitter in 2017.

 

Earlier this year Amnesty International released a report after examining the way women are targeted with hate speech online. Some 1.1 million abusive tweets were sent to the women, which included members of US Congress, female UK MPs and journalists employed by a variety of political websites. Using volunteers, the researchers sifted through nearly 300,000 tweets mentioning one of 778 women on their list, and noted abusive content relating to gender, race and sexuality.

 

It gets worse for women of color, who were 34 per cent more likely to receive such unwanted messages. And among black women, the situation is worse still: they're 84 per cent more likely than white women to be mentioned in problematic or abusive tweets. And that holds across the political spectrum, with both liberals and conservatives targeted equally.

 

 

"Twitter’s failure to effectively tackle violence and abuse on the platform has a chilling effect on freedom of expression online and undermines women’s mobilization for equality and justice – particularly groups of women who already face discrimination and marginalization," Amnesty International said in a statement.

 

The so-called "Troll Patrol" also found that black women were 84 percent more likely to be mentioned in abusive tweets than white women. Troll Patrol means we have the data to back up what women have long been telling us that Twitter is a place where racism, misogyny and homophobia are allowed to flourish basically unchecked," said Milena Marin, Senior Advisor for Tactical Research at Amnesty International.

 

Kumi Naidoo, secretary general of the human rights organization, chided Twitter  for failing to provide the data needed for researchers to understand whether the  social network is making any progress in its troll hunting.

 

"To be clear: it is NOT our job as a human rights organization to be analysing abusive tweets on this platform – it's Twitter's," he said. "But the company's refusal to make public this information, while allowing abuse to flourish basically unchecked, meant we had to do this study for them."

 

Amnesty noted that Twitter published its 13th biannual Transparency Report last week, and for the first time included a section on Twitter Rules Enforcement. Alas, the human rights org contends that the Transparency Report is insufficiently transparent because it omits the data necessary to understand the scope of online abuse on the site and to assess the impact of mitigation measures.

 

Twitter insists it's taking action, citing some 50 policy, procedural, and product changes that have been made since 2017 to drain its swamp. Posts extolling its efforts abound.

 

In response to a request for comment, a Twitter spokesperson provided remarks made by the company's global lead for legal, policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, as a formal response to Amnesty's findings.

 

"With regard to your forthcoming report, I would note that the concept of 'problematic' content for the purposes of classifying content is one that warrants further discussion," said Gadde. "It is unclear how you have defined or categorized such content, or if you are suggesting it should be removed from Twitter."

 

Gadde said she'd welcome further input from Amnesty about how to define problematic content so that the company can balance "the need to protect free expression and ensure policies are clearly and narrowly drafted." Gadde reiterated Dorsey's commitment to making Twitter a more civil place and to holding itself accountable.

 

The findings aren't likely to come as a surprise to Twitter -- the company has consistently publicised its alleged efforts in cleaning up the platform, with CEO Jack Dorsey recently appearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to announce his intention to "increase the health of public conversation." Twitter is supposedly investing heavily in machine learning that will guard against abusive tweets, but the platform remains guarded about the way its algorithms are trained and how abuse reports are handled.

 E-Magazine 
 VIDEOS  Placeholder image

Copyright www.mybrandbook.co.in @1999-2024 - All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. is prohibited.
Other Initiatives : www.varindia.com | www.spoindia.org