The micro blogging site Twitter, launched on March 2006 has phenomenal growth over the past 7 years. Twitter now has over 500 million users and there are an average of 400 million tweets sent every day, but is there enough protection on this platform for all these users?
Twitter is now being utilised by millions of people for update news and views, journalists are regularly using Twitter for news leads to get a story first, this is excellent for keeping up to date with everything in your world.
Twitter also has a down side, people seem to forget that once they have tweeted the whole world can access that information and it is directly linked back to you.
Paul Chambers, an unemployed former trainee accountant tweeted a ‘joke’ tweet saying: "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!” He only had a few hundred followers at the time, but the tweet was spotted by an airport employee and he was arrested and convicted of "sending a public electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character contrary to the Communications Act 2003" and he was fined £1,000.
Surely if tweets are able to stand up in court or to be the result of people getting fined thousands of pounds then Twitter must have to take more responsibility and have stronger guidelines in place for when people are getting abused.
Twitter complaints of crimes
Complaints of crimes involving Facebook and Twitter have increased by 780% over four years, according to official police figures. Social network crime was considered quite minor in 2008 when only 556 reports were made, this figure was recorded in 2012 at 4,908.
Currently on Twitter you can report abuse on the iPhone, but not on Android or the web.
In light with the recent abuse that Caroline Criado - Perez was receiving after she successfully campaigned to have a female figure on the £10 bank note, Twitter has now agreed to install a report abuse button on every single tweet on every platform.
But is this enough? What are they doing when people report a Tweet?
Article written by Daniel Briggs | Marketing Manager at Blue Octopus
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