Twitter Not Protecting Women Online: Amnesty Report

The Amnesty report says Twitter needs to do much more to address the online abuse of women and/or marginalized groups.

Twitter is still not doing enough to protect women and non-binary users from online violence and abuse, new analysis from Amnesty International found. The Twitter Scorecard grades the social media company’s record on implementing a series of recommendations to tackle abuse against women and non-binary persons on the platform.

The Amnesty report says Twitter needs to do much more to address the online abuse of women and/or marginalized groups. “Despite our repeated calls to improve their platform, Twitter is still falling short on its promises to protect users at heightened risk of online abuse,” said Michael Kleinman, Director of Technology and Human Rights at Amnesty International USA.

“For a company whose mission is to ‘give everyone the power to create and share ideas instantly without barriers,’ it’s become abundantly clear that women and/or marginalized groups disproportionately face threats to their online safety.”

A survey commissioned by Amnesty International also shows that women who are more active on the platform were more likely to report experiencing online abuse, compared to those less active – 40 percent of women who use the platform more than once a day report experiencing abuse, compared to 13 percent who use the platform less than once a week.

Amnesty International also asked women who chose not to report abuse why they did not do so. Notably, according to Amnesty, 100 percent of the women who use the platform numerous times a week and who didn’t report abuse responded that it was “not worth the effort”.

Ahead of publishing the Scorecard, Amnesty International says it wrote to Twitter to seek an update on the progress of implementing its recommendations and the company’s response has been reflected throughout the report.