Twitter is not doing enough to protect women online, says Amnesty International

A new report from Amnesty International has found that Twitter is still not doing enough to protect women and non-binary users from online abuse.

The organisation interviewed nine women who live in South Africa and are on Twitter or who previously held accounts on Twitter between July 2021 and August 2021.

The interviewees included politicians, journalists, artists, academics and activists who experienced abuse on the platform.

The interviews were semi-structured and focused on their experiences of abuse on Twitter, reporting abuse on the platform and Twitter’s response. The discussions also sought to determine if reporting such incidents led to a decline in the abuse they’d experienced on Twitter over the past two years.

These interviews contributed to Amnesty’s 2021 Twitter Scorecard. 

“It is concerning that woman, in particular, are facing this kind of abuse online, with little to sometimes no support from Twitter,” said Amnesty International South Africa’s executive director Shenilla Mohamed. 

The company has only implemented one of 10 recommendations in the report, with limited progress in improving transparency around the content moderation process and appeals process.

“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 against women,” said Mohamed.

“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 people from other marginalised groups disproportionately face threats to their online safety.”

A survey by Amnesty International also shows that women who are more active Twitter users and were more likely to report experiencing online abuse, compared to those less active.

At least 40% of women who use the platform more than once a day report experiencing abuse, compared to 13% who use the platform less than once a week.

Women who don’t report online abuse said it was “not worth the effort”.

Twitter has since increased the amount of information available through their Help Center and Transparency Reports, while also launching new public awareness campaigns, expanding the scope of their hateful conduct policy and improving their reporting mechanisms and privacy and security features.

“We’re committed to experimenting in public with product solutions that help address the fundamental problems our users are facing, and empowering them with controls to set their own experience, said Twitter in response to Amnesty International’s findings.

“While many of these changes are not directly captured in your report scorecard, we believe these improvements will ultimately enable our most vulnerable communities to better engage in free expression without fear, a goal we share with Amnesty.”

Compiled by Narissa Subramoney