Twitter Face Backlash rape -threat tweets

A barrage of rape and death threats on
Twitter aimed at feminist Caroline Criado-
Perez -- who petitioned to have women
displayed on British banknotes -- has
sparked outrage in the global media and
among the Twitterati.

Following a day-long onslaught, in which
Criado-Perez received around 50 sexually-
abusive tweets an hour, police finally
arrested a 21-year-old man in Manchester
on Sunday.

The feminist champion, whose campaign
resulted in the Bank of England agreeing to
picture Pride and Prejudice author Jane
Austen on every £10 bill, tweeted
throughout the abuse: "I actually can't keep
up with the screen-capping & reporting --
rape threats thick and fast now. If anyone
wants to report the tweets to Twitter."

Twitter UK's General Manager Tony Wang
said the social-networking company takes
online abuse very seriously, offering to
suspend accounts, and called on people to
report any "violation of Twitter rules."

World media
But the story has ignited a backlash against
the site from users and the media alike with
more than 50,000 people signing on online
petition urging Twitter to tackle Internet
trolls.

UK Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper
wrote to Wang on Sunday criticising
Twitter's "inadequate" response.
In her letter, Cooper wrote: "Despite the
scale and seriousness of these threats, the
official response from Twitter continues to
be extremely weak -- simply directing
Caroline away from Twitter towards the
police, and, belatedly, directing users to
abuse-reporting forms on Twitter."

Writing in The Guardian, columnist Tanya
Gold called on "misogynists" to be shamed
rather than criticized, describing the
Internet trolls as "lonely, fearful and dumb,"
adding that the emergence of social media
"has given the vicious a voice."

Criado-Perez had her own take on the
debate being played out her Twitter
account. Writing in the Independent on
Saturday, she said: "If we stand firm, and
shout back as one, we will win."

The BBC's technology correspondent Rory
Cellan-Jones argues that Twitter now faces a
"tricky dilemma" of protecting free speech
while under pressure to "make the network
a safer and more polite place."

Cellan-Jones believes Twitter would prefer
to see threatening Tweets referred to the
police, rather than introduce a "report
abuse" button on every post, which would
require significant manpower to monitor.

Twitter has already introduced a "report
tweet" function for the iPhone and is
currently developing the option for the web
and Android.

But The Telegraph's chief technology
blogger Mic Wright said a report function
would allow "any armchair activist to make
a vague stand without putting in any time,
effort or thought."

Wright recognizes that comment sections
on user-generated websites such as
YouTube are the "post-apocalyptic badlands
of the web... a resting place for the
misspelled dribblings of the chronically
hard-of-thinking." But he argues the Twitter
conundrum is a societal problem not a
technology-based one.

The debacle has led to a campaign for a
Twitter boycott on August 4 -- International
Friendship Day -- and an e-petition for a
"report abuse" button on Tweets.

Author of 'How To Be a Woman' and
columnist for The Times, Caitlin Moran,
proposed a "Trolliday" where Twitter users
would tweet the holding message: "Waiting
for troll solution."
Columnist Suzanne Moore also called for a
celebrity shun of the social-networking site.
On Saturday, she posted: "Spread the word.
Prominent guys with many followers join in
please. It's a gesture maybe but we can try
a big Twitter flounce and see?"

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