Toxic Twitter - A Toxic Place for Women (Amnesty International). Chapter 1

As the world beco­mes incre­a­singly connec­ted online, our reli­ance on social media plat­forms such as Twit­ter has also become incre­a­singly impor­tant. But the online world, and social media plat­forms like Twit­ter are not immune to many of the human rights abuses that women face offline.

Over the last 16 months, Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal has conduc­ted quali­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive rese­arch about women’s expe­ri­en­ces on social media plat­forms inclu­ding the scale, nature and impact of violence and abuse direc­ted towards women on Twit­ter, with a parti­cu­lar focus on the United King­dom (UK) and the United States of America (USA). Such abuse inclu­des direct or indi­rect thre­ats of physi­cal or sexual violence, discri­mi­na­tory abuse targe­ting one or more aspects of a woman’s iden­tity, targe­ted harass­ment, and privacy viola­ti­ons such as doxing or sharing sexual or inti­mate images of a woman without her consent.

Over the course of this rese­arch, Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal inter­vi­e­wed 86 women both indi­vi­du­ally and in groups in the UK and USA. We spoke to female poli­ti­ci­ans, jour­na­lists, acti­vists, blog­gers, writers, come­di­ans, games deve­lo­pers as well as women who use the plat­form but do not have a large follo­wing. Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal also spoke with dozens of experts in the United King­dom and United States working in the field of women’s rights, iden­tity-based discri­mi­na­tion, tech­no­logy, and digi­tal rights about violence and abuse against women on social media plat­forms. Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal consul­ted with multi­ple orga­ni­za­ti­ons and indi­vi­du­als, parti­cu­larly in the UK, when deve­lo­ping our recom­men­da­ti­ons and solu­ti­ons for Twit­ter. The rese­arch high­lights the parti­cu­lar expe­ri­en­ces of violence and abuse on Twit­ter against women of colour, women from ethnic or reli­gi­ous mino­ri­ties, lesbian, bise­xual or trans­gen­der women – as well as non-binary indi­vi­du­als – and women with disa­bi­li­ties, to expose the inter­sec­ti­o­nal nature of abuse on the plat­form. In Novem­ber 2017, the orga­ni­za­tion commis­si­o­ned Ipsos MORI to conduct an online poll in 8 coun­tries, inclu­ding the UK and US, about women’s expe­ri­en­ces of abuse or harass­ment on social media plat­forms more gene­rally and its impact on women’s free­dom of expres­sion online as well as the psycho­lo­gi­cal impact of online abuse and harass­ment.

Overall, our findings paint a worrying picture that Twit­ter can be a toxic place for its female users. The company’s failure to meet its respon­si­bi­li­ties regar­ding violence and abuse means that many women are no longer able to express them­sel­ves freely on the plat­form without fear of violence or abuse.

I think Twit­ter is the worst of the social media plat­forms, just because of the quic­ke­ned and masked flow [of abuse] that happens. The content feels pretty simi­lar across the plat­forms but the sheer volume of it on Twit­ter is what’s diffe­rent.

Jessica Valenti, US jour­na­list and writer

Although violence and abuse against women is certainly not limi­ted to any one social media plat­form, Twit­ter is one of the world’s largest social media compa­nies and its plat­form is one of the most influ­en­tial globally. Twit­ter is, there­fore, criti­cal in any effort to tackle violence and abuse online.

More­o­ver, the very nature of Twit­ter encou­ra­ges users to have public conver­sa­ti­ons and share their thoughts with others (often stran­gers) on the plat­form, meaning that users arguably most bene­fit from Twit­ter when they are able to parti­ci­pate in discus­si­ons openly. In fact, Twit­ter’s ability to provide ‘up-to-the-minute reac­ti­ons’ means that public figu­res are able to bypass tradi­ti­o­nal media outlets and engage directly with their audi­en­ces. Howe­ver, the open and public nature of these inter­ac­ti­ons also means that the plat­form is vulne­ra­ble to being used to send violent and abusive content. The ease and speed with which content can proli­fe­rate on Twit­ter means that women’s expe­ri­en­ces of violence and abuse on the plat­form requi­res an urgent and adequate response from the company.       

In our initial rese­arch on violence and abuse against women on social media plat­forms, many women we inter­vi­e­wed repe­a­tedly high­ligh­ted Twit­ter as a place where violence and abuse against women is wides­pread and where inade­quate reme­dies exist for those who expe­ri­ence such abuse. Twit­ter itself has publicly acknow­led­ged that they have a lot more work to do when it comes to tack­ling violence and abuse against women on the plat­form. Multi­ple execu­ti­ves from the company have stated that the plat­form has a problem with abuse. For exam­ple, in 2017, CEO Jack Dorsey stated,

We see voices being silen­ced on Twit­ter every day. We’ve been working to coun­te­ract this for the past 2 years…We prio­ri­ti­zed this in 2016. We upda­ted our poli­cies and incre­a­sed the size of our teams. It wasn’t enough.

Jack Dorsey, CEO at Twit­ter

Many of the women who spoke to Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal about the violence and abuse they expe­ri­ence on Twit­ter empha­si­zed how impor­tant the plat­form is to them – both profes­si­o­nally and perso­nally. Women rely on social media plat­forms like Twit­ter to advo­cate, commu­ni­cate, mobi­lize, access infor­ma­tion and gain visi­bi­lity. 

Pamela Merritt, a US blog­ger and repro­duc­tive rights acti­vist, told us,

“I am a bit of a Twit­ter addict. I wake up, I check Twit­ter. I have two cups of coffee, and I check it again. Being online is impor­tant for my work. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know what people are saying and I want to weigh in, so I’m on Twit­ter through the day”. 

Seyi Akiwowo, UK Poli­ti­cian and acti­vist, talked about how Twit­ter makes her feel part of a move­ment and ‘puts words to her expe­ri­en­ces’ of being a woman of colour. She told us,

 “I feel torn. I love Twit­ter. The plat­form has connec­ted me to people I will probably never see in my entire life and they are amazing, success­ful and inspi­ra­ti­o­nal people. There is now a massive move­ment of women of colour online. We express our beauty and confi­dence and talk about self-care and inter­sec­ti­o­nal inequa­lity…and so some of my life chan­ging moments and deve­lop­ment into woman­hood has happe­ned because of and via Twit­ter. I remem­ber finding my first inter­na­ti­o­nal job through Twit­ter. The possi­bi­li­ties and oppor­tu­ni­ties on that plat­form are endless.”

 Imani Gandy, US jour­na­list, also stres­sed how Twit­ter has become the epi-centre of commu­ni­ca­ti­ons and soli­da­rity for margi­na­li­zed commu­ni­ties. She explains,

“I think Twit­ter has become the new public square. I’ve found Twit­ter to be a really good plat­form for people who normally don’t have as much of a say in the poli­ti­cal process. I’m talking prima­rily young people and people of colour. There is a reason that ‘Black Twit­ter’ is a thing. It has been really power­ful that black people have been able to come toget­her to reach out to other black people across the country. Whet­her it’s dishing about the latest episode of Scan­dal or orga­ni­zing around Black Lives Matter – it has really become a power­ful tool. And elite poli­ti­ci­ans are not used to having to answer to these types of people.” 

Poli­ti­ci­ans them­sel­ves agree. Scot­tish Parli­a­men­ta­rian and Leader of the Oppo­si­tion, Ruth David­son, empha­si­zed how impor­tant Twit­ter is as a tool to commu­ni­cate and listen to her cons­ti­tu­ents and the wider public. She notes,

“Social media plat­forms are where a lot of poli­ti­cal debate now happens, parti­cu­larly as we see the divide in age range of voters. For a lot of youn­ger voters, actu­ally – they don’t want to be told things – they want to be able to discuss them.” 

Twit­ter remains an impor­tant tool for women across indus­tries. US writer Chel­sea Cain told Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal how she relied on Twit­ter to talk to other writers when she moved from writing novels to writing comics. She explains,

“I have a lot of friends who work in comics and we kept in touch via Twit­ter. The comic book industry uses Twit­ter like a bulle­tin board—it’s the place everyone comes when they have an announ­ce­ment or a compla­int. Readers. Editors. Artists. Writers. Colou­rists. Lette­rers. Everyone I know in comics is on Twit­ter. The plat­form really fuels a connec­tion between crea­tors and fans. Face­book is for novels. Twit­ter is for comics. Don’t ask me why."

In addi­tion to move­ment-buil­ding and networ­king, some women simply use Twit­ter to commu­ni­cate what they are up to. Comics writer Kelly Sue DeCon­nick told us,

“Some­ti­mes I use social media as a public figure to promote books and appe­a­ran­ces. Often I use it just to be social with people, just to chat.” 

But despite all the possi­bi­li­ties and the posi­tive ways in which the plat­form is used by women on a daily basis, Twit­ter remains fertile ground for rein­for­cing exis­ting gender inequa­li­ties and discri­mi­na­tion against women online. Harm­ful and nega­tive gender stere­oty­pes of women offline, as well as wides­pread discri­mi­na­tion against women rooted in patri­ar­chal struc­tu­res, mani­fest as violent and abusive tweets against some women on Twit­ter. All forms of violence and abuse against women, both in the physi­cal and digi­tal world, must be seen through the lens of the syste­ma­tic margi­na­li­za­tion of women throug­hout soci­ety. Violence and abuse against women on Twit­ter is not a new pheno­me­non, it is simply an exten­sion of exis­ting and syste­ma­tic discri­mi­na­tion against women that has found its way into the digi­tal sphere. As First Minis­ter of Scot­land, Nicola Stur­geon, explains,

“There’s a link between the misogyny and abuse that women expe­ri­en­ces offline and onli­ne… Social media is just a diffe­rent way of commit­ting these acts. Ulti­ma­tely it’s the misogyny lying behind it that is the problem. So, it’s that we have to tackle, not just the means by which people are able to spread their hate and misogyny and abuse.”

UK jour­na­list Hadley Free­man agrees. She told Amnesty,

“I think there is a connec­tion between the misogyny women face offline and the abuse they face online. I mean, a nice guy isn’t going to be calling women «infec­ted c*nts» online, is he?”

Women of colour, in parti­cu­lar, empha­si­zed to Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal that in addi­tion to Twit­ter mani­fes­ting exis­ting patri­ar­chal struc­tu­res in soci­ety, ideo­lo­gies of white supre­macy are also perme­a­ting into the plat­form. Renee Bracey Sher­man, a US abor­tion rights acti­vist, explai­ned how the violence and abuse she expe­ri­en­ces on social media plat­forms went to a deeper level when she star­ted talking about repro­duc­tive rights issues or the Black Lives Matter (BLM) move­ment. She told Amnesty,

“When I star­ted talking about abor­tion, the abuse on Twit­ter went to a deeper level. When I talked about BLM, it went to a deeper level. That’s the deep issue of how much white supre­macy and misogyny is really embed­ded in our culture. And people are upset when margi­na­li­zed folks, black folks, women of colour, trans women, trans folks – when they reclaim their narra­tive and are unapo­lo­ge­tic – it makes people uncom­for­ta­ble. And this primal level of attack comes out and they just say such disgus­ting things.”

Under the United Nati­ons (UN) Guiding Prin­ci­ples on Busi­ness and Human Rights, Twit­ter, as a company, has a speci­fic respon­si­bi­lity to respect all human rights – inclu­ding the rights to non-discri­mi­na­tion and free­dom of expres­sion and opinion – and to take concrete steps to avoid causing or contri­bu­ting to abuses of those rights.  This inclu­des taking action to iden­tify, prevent, address and account for human rights abuses that are linked to its opera­ti­ons. Speci­fi­cally, as part of its human rights due dili­gence, Twit­ter should be asses­sing – on an ongoing and proac­tive basis – how its poli­cies and prac­ti­ces impact on users’ right to free­dom of expres­sion and opinion as well other rights, and take steps to miti­gate or prevent any possi­ble nega­tive impacts. It is also criti­cal that Twit­ter is trans­pa­rent about its poli­cies and prac­ti­ces and the steps it is taking to iden­tify and address human rights abuses.

Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal contac­ted Twit­ter in Janu­ary 2018 reques­ting that the company share infor­ma­tion and data on how it responds to reports of violence and abuse on Twit­ter, inclu­ding disag­gre­ga­ted infor­ma­tion on the number of reports of abuse it recei­ves, the number of reports found in viola­tion of the Twit­ter rules and response times to reports of abuse. Grea­ter trans­pa­rency around the number of content mode­ra­tors it employs and details on how they are trai­ned on gender and other iden­tity-based forms of abuse and inter­na­ti­o­nal human rights stan­dards was also reques­ted. Twit­ter stated in a letter dated 14 Febru­ary 2018 that rele­a­sing such data would be unin­for­ma­tive and poten­ti­ally misle­a­ding. Twit­ter stated,

“Meaning­ful trans­pa­rency is a ques­tion we share your passion for. The ques­tion of abso­lute numbers of reports and the propor­tion of accounts that are acti­o­ned is one on which we conti­nue to reflect. Howe­ver, it is impor­tant to note that this type of infor­ma­tion can be both unin­for­ma­tive and poten­ti­ally misle­a­ding. One of the challen­ges, as we have discus­sed with your Amnesty colle­a­gues previ­ously, is that users regu­larly report content with which they disa­gree or in some cases, with the direct intent of trying to silence anot­her user’s voice for poli­ti­cal reasons. More­o­ver, there is a misper­cep­tion that the volume of reports impacts our enfor­ce­ment deci­si­ons, but this is not the case. In our meeting you discus­sed poten­tial targets in this space, and we would be inter­es­ted to hear any ideas you might have.”

Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal agrees that this context is impor­tant to unders­tand in the repor­ting process, howe­ver this does not negate Twit­ter’s human rights respon­si­bi­lity to be trans­pa­rent in how it is dealing with reports of violence and abuse on the plat­form nor does it take away from the fact that unders­tan­ding how Twit­ter is respon­ding to speci­fic reports of abuse will only help strengt­hen and empo­wer user’s unders­tan­ding of how such abuse is dealt with. More­o­ver, knowing the true scale of abuse on the plat­form ulti­ma­tely allows everyone to help deve­lop more concrete solu­ti­ons to tackle the problem.

In a further letter to Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal dated 15 March 2018, Twit­ter reite­ra­ted that abuse and hate­ful conduct direc­ted at women are prohi­bi­ted on the plat­form, that the company had made chan­ges to improve safety on the plat­form and had incre­a­sed the number of acti­ons taken against abusive accounts:

“Abuse and hate­ful conduct direc­ted at women, inclu­ding direct thre­ats of violence, and harass­ment, are prohi­bi­ted on Twit­ter. We have made more than 30 indi­vi­dual chan­ges to our product, poli­cies and opera­ti­ons in the past 16 months, all with the goal of impro­ving safety for everyone. We now take action on 10 times the number of abusive accounts as the same time last year.”

Amnesty Inter­na­ti­o­nal acknow­led­ges that Twit­ter has recently taken steps to improve women’s expe­ri­en­ces on the plat­form, howe­ver the orga­ni­za­ti­on’s assess­ment is that these are not yet suffi­ci­ent to adequa­tely tackle the scale and nature of violence and abuse against women on Twit­ter.

Dick Costolo, former Twit­ter CEO

We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the plat­form and we’ve sucked at it for years…We lose core user after core user by not addres­sing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I’m frankly asha­med of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it.

Dick Costolo, former Twit­ter CEO (2015)

Vijaya Gadde, Twit­ter Gene­ral Coun­cil

Free­dom of expres­sion means little as our underlying philo­sophy if we conti­nue to allow voices to be silen­ced because they are afraid to speak up.

Vijaya Gadde, Gene­ral Coun­sel (2015)

 Jack Dorsey, Current Twit­ter CEO (2016)

Abuse is not part of civil discourse. It shuts down conver­sa­tion and prevents us from unders­tan­ding one anot­her. No one deser­ves to be a target of abuse online and it doesn’t have a place on Twit­ter.

Jack Dorsey, Current Twit­ter CEO (2016)

Jack Dorsey, Current Twit­ter CEO (2017)

We see voices being silen­ced on Twit­ter every day. We’ve been working to coun­te­ract this for the past 2 years…We prio­ri­ti­zed this in 2016. We upda­ted our poli­cies and incre­a­sed the size of our teams. It wasn’t enough.

Jack Dorsey, Current Twit­ter CEO (2017)

Jack Dorsey, Current Twit­ter CEO (2018) 

…We love instant, public, global messa­ging and conver­sa­tion. It’s what Twit­ter is and it’s why we’re here. But we didn’t fully predict or unders­tand the real-world nega­tive conse­quen­ces. We acknow­ledge that now, and are deter­mi­ned to find holis­tic and fair solu­ti­ons.

Jack Dorsey, Current Twit­ter CEO (2018)