Twitter rolls out new tool to ease reporting harassment to police

PanARMENIAN.Net - Twitter on Tuesday, March 17, rolled out a new tool that makes it easier to report harassment to the police in a move that demonstrates its ongoing intent to deal with abuse on the microblogging platform, Digital Trends reports.

Now when a user reports a threatening tweet, there will be an option to send a summary email with the information submitted. This lays out clearly all the details input regarding the abuse, and can be printed and handed over to law enforcement, should one wish to do so.

The emailed report contains the threatening tweet and URL together with the sender’s Twitter username and account URL, plus a timestamp for the tweet. The account information and a timestamp showing when the report was generated is also included.

A blog post announcing the new tool also includes a link to a page displaying guidelines for law enforcement explaining about other potentially useful information that Twitter holds and how authorities can request it.

“While we take threats of violence seriously and will suspend responsible accounts when appropriate, we strongly recommend contacting your local law enforcement if you’re concerned about your physical safety,” Twitter’s Ethan Avey wrote in the post, adding, “We hope that providing you with a summary of your report will make that process easier for you.”

The move to bring together all the relevant information in this way is a sensible one by Twitter, and one that’s likely to be appreciated by not only the targeted user, but the investigating cops, too. The San Francisco-based company has recently increased its efforts to improve the way it handles abuse on the service, Digital Trends says.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently admitted in an internal email that the company was having difficulties dealing with the issue, saying it “sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.” He added that failing to deal with the trolls and harassment in a more determined manner meant the social media platform was losing “core user after core user.” Costolo promised more robust action to rid the service of trolls, or, at the least, to ensure that “when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.”