Microblogging services provider Twitter has partnered with the non-profit advocacy organization Women, Action, and the Media (Wam) to engage in handling the online harassment of women, said to be taking an “unprecedented” scale, The Guardian reports. Following a study that showed that 26% of women aged between 18 and 24 have been stalked online and 25% of them have been the target of inappropriate behavior, Wam has created an easy to use form through which users can report harassment cases to them, reports that they will further “escalate” to the operator.
Twitter had a similar form in place where users can report being harassed or bullied online, but the one rolled out by Wam asks for more detailed and specific information about the incidents. According to Jaclyn Friedman, Wam’s executive director, there are a number of different ways women can be harassed through Twitter, and the current form provided by the company does not cover them sufficiently. Wam’s form asks specific questions, like “Do you fear for your personal safety because of this harassment?” and “How many times have you reported this harassment to Twitter?”, and also allows users to report multiple harassing accounts at once. Wam promises to handle all reports in 24 hours, or hopefully even less. The form introduced by Wam has another purpose besides just collection reports: it gathers information about the harassers’ behavior online. With this information Twitter can better understand the way these individuals behave, and maybe even take specific steps that have the ability to stop them.
The form offered by Wam will only collect the reports and transmit them to Twitter, the organization not being in charge – and neither in measure – to handle them further on. Dealing with trolls and harassers remains the responsibility of Twitter. According to The Guardian, some feminists are concerned about how much reform this new relationship will trigger – according to them, just reporting and blocking a user is not a good short-term solution, often leading to an increased amount of assault through other social networks, email, mobile and other ways.