Social media giant Twitter has created the Twitter Trust & Safety Council to combat harassment and abuse on the messaging site. (Photo : Getty Images/ Bethany Clark)
Waking up to the complaints of 27 percent women using the messaging site of hate speech and harassment, Twitter has decided to seek outside help to mold the company's services and policies.
The social media giant has decided to launch the Twitter Trust & Safety Council, collaborating with safety experts and over 40 organizations from as many as 13 regions to reduce abuse and promote its messaging site, an official blog post stated on the Safer Internet Day published on Tuesday.
Aside from Twitter and various safety experts, the council will comprise Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, Anti-Bullying Pro, National Domestic Violence Hotline and Family Online Safety Institute.
The move comes following a revision of Twitter's TWTR-36% safety policy. The restructured guidelines prohibit users of the messaging site from making any violent threat or supporting violence, which includes threatening or encouraging terrorism. In addition, the new guidelines also urge the users not to provoke or participate in harassment or targeted abuse of other people.
Violation of these rules will call for punishment, the updated guidelines emphasize, adding that it may include deleting objectionable tweets and also locking the account of the guilty user for good.
Setting up the council is important in view of combating specific abuses received by certain users as well as to stop hate speech by a small section of people using the messaging site. Towards the end of 2014, the social media giant introduced a number of new tools to help block abusive users and also report such incidences for harassment, USA Today reported.
In December last, Twitter brought in a number of small changes in the website's privacy policy, which specified the actions by users that would be deemed as abusive behavior. There was a special emphasis on "hateful conduct."
A study undertaken by Pew Research Center in 2014 found that about 40 percent of adults using the social media have experienced online harassment in some form or the other. In addition, 73 percent users have been witness to what happened to other Internet users.
According to the findings of the study women in the age group of 18 and 24 years are the most vulnerable to severe harassments online. At the same time, the report said that 26 percent women in this age group have experienced being stalked online, in addition to 25 percent young women being sexually harassed online, Pew reported.
Meanwhile, the move also aims to increase Twitter's active user base every month by attracting new users to the messaging site. In fact, the active user base of Twitter had somewhat slowed down during the recent quarters. One reason for this is said to be rise in complaints regarding abuse by some users.
Watch the video on Twitter creating Safety Council to prevent online abuse.
