#ToxicTwitter

On March 21, as Twitter celebrated 12 years since the first ever tweet, Amnesty International asked Twitter to do more to address some of the more toxic behaviour users are displaying toward women.

For many women, Twitter is a platform where violence and abuse against them flourishes, often with little accountability. Amnesty states that Twitter is failing in its responsibility to respect women’s rights online by inadequately investigating and responding to reports of violence and abuse in a transparent manner.

Their research, ‘Toxic Twitter -A Toxic place for women’ is based on interviews with 86 women and non-gender binary individuals, including politicians, journalists, and ordinary users across the UK and USA, about their experiences of Twitter’s failure to take reports of abuse seriously.

The research includes interviews with several leading women’s rights campaigners and activists from Scotland, as well as filmed testimony from Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson MSP, and Kezia Dugdale MSP, former Leader of Scottish Labour. Their frank, and sometimes shocking, testimony has received global coverage.

Read the report here:  https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2018/03/online-violence-against-women-chapter-1/

View the filmed testimonies from Scottish politicians here: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/scottish-human-rights-blog/times-toxictwitter