As you all we’ll know, twitter is a social broadcast network that enables people and organizations to publicly share brief messages instantly around the world. This brings variety of users with different voices, ideas and perspectives.
Being the target of online abuse is not easy to confront with. And Twitter has sadly become a common occurrence of bullying, harassment and abuse.
One of the examples, related with the sad recent new about victims who died abroad crashed Germanwings flight. :
The message above reads: “OK, I’m going to say it: but half of Spain is hoping that the 45 Spanish surnames belong to Catalans, Basques and panchitos” The latter name is an offensive nickname for Latin Americans. The message was posted in response to the government’s announcement that there were “45 Spanish surnames” among the victims of the air crash.
“See, see, do not make a drama, on the plane were Catalans, not people”.
Many of the messages appeared to target Catalans, inhabitants of the culturally distinct Catalonia region and regular targets for teasing in the rest of Spain. Interior Minister has ordered Spanish security forces to investigate the origins and authors of that kind of comments.
Another example: Sara Payne, the mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah, has quit Twitter after suffering a sustained campaign of online harassment.
Sara Payne, 45, whose daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in 2000, had been forced off the social media network after suffering online harassment.
Example from famous people: Robin Williams’s grieving daughter signed off Twitter and Instagram following her father’s tragic suicide. The reason? Trolls who taunted her – posting Photoshopped pictures said to show Williams’s body in a morgue (it was actually another man) and with bruises around his neck.
This type of behavior is not tolerate offline. Do you imagine some crazy Spanish people, for instance, on a commercial center, telling the stupid things of catalans? I don’t think so…
Can you ever imagine a situation in the office where people came up to you on a daily basis and called you fat, ugly or stupid? Can you imagine receiving emails from your work colleagues telling you they wish you were dead?
Wich is the differents between offline and online?
In my point of view, It’s too easy and simple for the people to start bullying on Twitter. Cyberbullies, also known as trolls, create fake accounts to launch their cyber attacks against people they don’t like or they are disagree. Or maybe, they are doing the job that some enemy ordered them to do that task for attack them.
However, there are also many people who use their personal accounts to attach other people. But that people is easier to stop them than the trolls because they can finish with them by unfollowing the abusive users to stop receiving an @reply and blocking them to end any communication with that user.
Which other ways can help to avoid that kind of offenses?
To avoid that kind of offenses, few days ago, twitter created a new “QualityFilter” to stop the trolls.
That feature is currently rolling out to verified users on iOS, which let them select an edited version of their notifications timeline based on factors like which other users they had the most interactions with.
From strategic standpoint, it makes sense that Twittes has made this feature available first for verified users because are usually the people with more followers(and therefore, more trolls).
Concluding, I think that the education has to improve that kind of behavior, raise the awareness of the society and the government about that kind of things are wrong and also the low has to punish harder all the trolls and people that participate on cyberbullying to ensure the safety of its users.
On the other hand, that kind of actions are creating a lot of new jobs related, for instance, with online law and psychologists.
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