14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has finally responded officially to some of the criticism from the past week regarding the fact that it's not doing enough to prevent abusive messages. Twitter prides itself as a supporter of free speech, but it also wants to keep its users safe.
It's a fine line and Twitter usually chooses freedom of speech, but the company has now responded to criticism with some actual measures designed to increase safety.
The biggest change, perhaps, is the addition of a "report abuse" button to each tweet in the iOS version of the service and on the mobile site. This isn't new, but Twitter is highlighting the feature now after several threats made to Twitter users have created quite a controversy in the UK.
Bomb and rape threats were made against several women (something all too common on the Internet, unfortunately), including an MP and several journalists.
This was made worse by the fact that Twitter doesn't make it easy to report such aggressions. A petition for the service to add a "report abuse" button gained more than 120,000 signatures.
Twitter has already included such a feature in some mobile versions of the service and will add the button to all the mobile apps and the desktop site next month.
"It comes down to this: people deserve to feel safe on Twitter," Del Harvey, the company's trust and safety director and Tony Wang, Twitter's UK general manager, explained.
"Over the past week, we've been listening to your feedback on how we can improve our service. You told us that we need to make our rules clearer, simplify our abuse reporting process, and promote the responsible use of Twitter," they added.
Besides the new button, Twitter has also updated its rules with a clearer message regarding abuses of this kind. The company is also working with the UK Safer Internet Center on better ways to protect users.