Twitter to Collaborate With Advocacy Group to Fight Online Harassment of Women

Media reports suggest that the non-profit advocacy group, Women, Action and the Media (Wam) has teamed up with Twitter to tackle harassment of women online.

After a Pew study showed that 26 percent women aged between 18 and 24 have been stalked online and have faced sexual harassment, Wam chalked out a comprehensive but easy-to-use form to enable victims to report harassments and threats that will then be "escalated" to Twitter, reported The Guardian.

Wam's questionnaire is more detailed than Twitter's and includes questions like, "Do you fear for your personal safety because of this harassment?" and "How many times have you reported this harassment to Twitter?"

It allows users to list multiple harassing accounts at once.

The form also aims to collect comprehensive data about how harassers behave online, in order to help Twitter to better understand the way trolls behave and take more concrete steps to stop them.

Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Wam, said that women are getting harassed online in numerous ways and Twitter's current reporting system does not catch all of them.

A statement released by Twitter said that it is always working towards improving the way it handles online abuse and added that Wam is one of the many organizations the social media platform works with around the world to ensure best practices for user safety.

Source: ANI