Twitter Abuse>>>50% of tweets from women

Half of all misogynistic tweets posted on
Twitter come from women, a study suggests.
Over a three-week period, think tank Demos
counted the number of uses of two particular
words as indicators of misogyny.
It found evidence of large-scale misogyny,

with 6,500 unique users targeted by 10,000
abusive tweets in the UK alone.
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has said that tackling
abuse is a priority.
The research comes as five UK MPs - Yvette
Cooper, Maria Miller, Stella Creasy, Jo Swinson
and Jess Phillips - launch their Reclaim the
Internet campaign, in response to growing
public concern about the impact of hate
speech and abuse on social media.
The campaign has opened an online forum to
discuss ways to make the internet less
aggressive, sexist, racist and homophobic.
Launching the campaign, Ms Cooper told the
BBC: "The truth is nobody knows what the
best answers are. There is more when there is
criminal abuse. for example rape threats, that
the police should be doing but what is the
responsibility of everyone else? What more
should social media platforms be doing?"
She said that the campaign was an
opportunity to "put forward their proposals
and demands for the changes we want to
see".
In response Twitter's head of trust and safety
Kira O'Connor told the BBC: "Hateful conduct
has no place on the Twitter platform and is a
violation of our terms of service.
"In addition to our policies and user controls,
such as block, mute and our new multiple
tweet reporting functionality, we work with
civil society leaders and academic experts to
understand the challenge that exists."
The Demos study also looked at international
tweets and found more than 200,000
aggressive tweets using the words, "slut" and
"whore", were sent to 80,000 people over the
same three weeks.
Stark reminder
Demos used algorithms to distinguish
between tweets being used in explicitly
aggressive ways and those that were more
conversational in tone.
Researcher Alex Krasodomski-Jones said: "This
study provides a birds-eye snapshot of what is
ultimately a very personal and often
traumatic experience for women.
"While we have focused on Twitter, who are
considerably more generous in sharing their
data with researchers like us, it's important to
note that misogyny is prevalent across all
social media, and we must make sure that the
other big tech companies are also involved in
discussions around education and developing
solutions."
She added that it was not about "policing the
internet" but was more "a stark reminder that
we are frequently not as good citizens online
as we are offline".