Twitter has made it clear that harassment and relative topics are on high priority for the social network giant, it has teamed with WAM! to dig into this issue a little deeper.
Latest twitter news is that the CEO for social network giant, Twitter has expressed that the foremost essential task list has included kicking the trolls off the social network on top. Recently, the company brought some chances to the policies in order to accomplish this goal. A new study from the Women Action Media group has proved that it is not an easy task to aim for eradication of the harassment on the social network.
In the fall of last year, the company had appointed the group which is known as WAM as the authenticated reporters. Such groups have been allowed to report and also classify the harassment on other users' behalf and then the social network giant has to prioritize such reports in theory. Over the time period of three weeks, the group had collected 811 harassment reports out of which, 161 were reported directly to the social network platform. All the reports had been analyzed by the group, hoping to find the drivers of such harassment on Twitter. The extensive report that had been published yesterday, the WAM! Group discovered that systems of the social network for policing the harassment are and have been easily gamed.
Twitter news reports that this extensive report suggested that integral problem is that the social network asks for the pro-harassment tweet link from the user so that the investigation can move on. Being aware of this, the harassers are often found deleting such tweets soon they are sure that the person has read it and therefore there is no link to it. This phenomenon has been given the name of "tweet and delete" by WAM! Some other form of authentication, for instance, a screenshot of the tweet could help the social network catch such actor even long after they cover their tracks.
The other trend that the group has found out is "dogpiling" in which the harassment wave has begun against the user from various accounts. The group points out that such user need a way in which they can report multiple accounts that are a part of this harassment activity and also resolve the issue at the same time.
The other two very important aspects the group found were, "false flagging" and "report trolling" which has made the matters complicated for Twitter however but has unleashed these issues as well. In these aspects, people try making fake claims and in some cases, are successful too. This only creates hassle for the reviewers and brings difficulty for them to differentiate between the legit and fake claims of harassments. Approximately 57 percent of the reports have been received from the bystanders, adding another hurdle for the verification.