Women, Action & the Media (WAM) has announced an unprecedented collaboration with Twitter, with an aim to cut down the harassment of women on the popular social media platform.
 
WAM is running a pilot project to support all Twitter users experiencing harassment and abuse on the platform due to their gender. Users are invited to use this simple form to report it to WAM!: https://womenactionmedia.wufoo.com/forms/wam¬twitter¬harassment¬reporting¬tool/ . WAM will escalate the validated reports to Twitter and track Twitter’s responses to different kinds of gendered harassment. At the end of the pilot test period, WAM will analyze the data collected and use it to work with Twitter to better understand how gendered harassment functions on their platform, and to improve their responses to it.
 
A recent Pew research study found that fully 25% of young women online have been sexually harassed online and 26% have experienced stalking. What’s more, Pew found that women overall are disproportionately targeted by the most severe forms of online abuse.
 
“We’re thrilled to be working with Twitter to make their platform safer for women. The disproportionate targeting of women online results in them removing their voices from the public conversation. We’re so glad that Twitter recognizes that the best way to ensure equally free speech for all users on their platform is to ensure that all users are equally free to speak without being targeted by harassment, abuse and threats,” said Jaclyn Friedman, Executive Director of WAM.
 
The easy¬to¬use form, created pro¬bono by an experienced developer concerned about increasing harassment of women online, will let users report gendered harassment details that have never before been tracked and analyzed. Users can report the specific types of abuse they are experiencing (whether someone has made an impostor account, is sending them violent threats, is using Twitter to encourage people to harass the person offline, or any of other several defined categories), whether the abuse is happening on other social media platforms, and if the abuse is being perpetrated by a single individual or a group. This information will help identify the types of gendered harassment Twitter already handles well, and in which specific areas new solutions need to be developed.
 
This project grew out of WAM!’s participating in the Speech and Safety Coalition, a group of women’s advocacy organizations working with social media companies to ensure that women have equal access to both free speech and safety online. WAM! was also behind last year’s enormously successful #FBrape campaign, which convinced Facebook to crack down on content which promotes gender¬based violence.