Twitter - power to abuse

There was a time when using twitter was like crying in the rain. Tweets sent out drifted off into the ephemera without much impact on anyone's lives. It was a place people talked about what they had for lunch, bitched about the weather and discussed conspiracy theories over the continued success of Simon Cowell. Whilst all that is still true, over the past couple of years the media have started to take twitter far more seriously and the impact it can have - both positive and negative - has been recognised.

Twitter can - and is - used for good, from making sick kid's dreams come true; to connecting friends with common interests across the world; to making "internet celebrities" of those rare people who can fit wit, intelligence and insight into 140 characters. However, with this infamy also comes the negative and it's those stories that have made the news in recent times.

For some, the ability to say whatever they think or feel to thousands of people has led them to do exactly that, without a passing thought to the consequence. Twitter has sadly always been used to make racist, homophic and simply moronic posts but now people are starting to take note, whether is be the offensive tweets about the gravely ill Fabrice Muamba, the vile homophobic threats against Boy George or sexist abuse towards Louise Mensch.

People are beginning to realise that - as in the street - you can't simply say whatever you like on twitter without it touching or effecting anyone and prosecutions have been made.

As some of you know, I recently received a second bout of abuse from a twitter user. He  to try and blackmail me, claiming to have information on me, where I live and threatening to inform my husband about my behaviour and "come up and see me so we can talk about this". FInally, he made the libelous statement that I have been "convicted for threatening to rape children."

http://twitpic.com/a2tzdv/full

At the time of the initial statements, I did noting about it. However, when he repeated these threats and accussed me of stalking him I decided it was time to take action. With all the publicity over twitter prosecutions as mentoined above and reading about a succesful prosecution by a councillor (who had a twitter user charged for calling him a C***) I thought that this kind of behaviour was now taken seriously.

I contacted the police in England, who were extremely helpful but as I (the "victim") live in Scotland they could not actually prosecute. It was down to my local police. When I contacted them the result was very different. The police officers admitted they knew nothing about twitter and in the end said the best course of action was blocking and reporting the user to twitter.

I appreciated their help but found the advice lacking. Whilst I agree that generally bullies and "trolls" are best ignored - thus starving them of the attention they thrive on - there are times when this does not solve the problem. This is not the same as someone sending you abusive emails - where the upset comes only from you seeing the unpleasant things said about and to you.

In the age of social networking, bullying and harassment is not about simply upsetting you, it's very often about attempting to defame, destroy and derail your online presence. Trolls (a short-hand, catch-all term I'll use for bullies and harassers online) are not just happy with hating you, they want everyone else to hate you too. In the days before social media and online lives, an enemy might harm your reputation by spreading rumours or making accusations against you - but it would be hard for them to reach more than handful of people. Now trolls can set up a blog, facebook or twitter account and spread any gossip, innuendo or accusations to thousands of people in a matter of minutes.

So while you may block them and not see what they are saying, all that does is mean they can carry on saying whatever they feel like about you and you won't know about it. Rather like the old "if a tree is cut down in a wood and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise", but in this case you know the noise it's made when it's repeated to you by a well-meaning lumberjack or is recorded and played back to you when every time you try to make a phone call.

These days some "ordinary" users on twitter have the same amount of followers as a local newspaper, and with the power of the retweet or share the tweet or status about you can reach thousands more in an instant. Whilst it may be noble not to care what anyone thinks of you, it's soul-destroying to have your name or repuation besmurched to friends, colleagues, and contact - whether you are reading the slurs or not. In the past week I have spoken to several tiwtter users who are being harassed via twitter and both have found the main problem is the abuser is sending tweets ABOUT them to people they know, admire or work with.

This leaves the option of reporting a troubling user to Twitter. To begin with, I found the actual process a mine-field of clicking round and round their help and contact pages before finally locating the correct page (here for anyone you needs it https://support.twitter.com/forms) and then the form itself created a whole new set of issues.

In order to report harassment to twitter (as opossed to impersonation or spam) you have to specify individual tweets rather than just a twitetr account in general - this can be tricky when so many twitter trolls will delete the offending tweet after it has made its impact. And twitter support clearly states they DO NOT accept screenshots, so even if you capture evidence that the tweet existed, in the world of twitter support it's gone therefore it can't be reported - despite their statement "If someone means you harm, just removing the threatening statements does not make the issue go away."

Another stumbling block is the policy that Twitter will not receive reports on harassment to a user from a third party - that is, if your followers can see a person is sending you abusive tweets (perhaps while you are not reading your timeline) they can't report it. ONLY a complaint made by the person who has received the threats will be accepted by twitter.

This means, that in the case of Fabrice Muamba only HE could report that he was offended by the tweets about him, whilst he lay critically ill in hospital. Obviously this wasn't the case in his situation, but it's the policy twitter states in it's automatic reply to any Support Ticket submitted.

Now I understand why they may have this policy in place - without it they'd likely be getting millions of support ticket submissions every day with such delights as "OMG Drake just said Justin Beiber's music is crap, you have to BAN HIM" and "This bitch said Harry from 1D is ugly, I want something done!" - but it's not a policy that is in place in other forms of media. Whilst Andrew Sachs could make a complaint to OFCOM that he was abused by Russell Brand and Jonathan ROss, it was the sheer number of complaints who said THEY were offended by the broadcasted interaction that led to it actually having an impact.

This again brings us back to the blocking issue, if you have blocked the user but they are still tweeting abusive messages about and to you viewed by their thousands of followers, none of them can do anything about it - other than inform you so YOu can report it. Once again, making blocking redundant.

The main problem with Twitter's support is their belief that everyone has different levels of tolerance in terms of what is offensive, so they refuse to deem anything offensive. Therefore you can make racist, homophobic and generally abusive (they say they will respond to specific threats of actual harm) comments freely without Twitter doing anything.

That is, of course, unless you are famous. Here is the important difference. If you are a well known personality with hundreds of thousands of followers and a high-flying lawyer behind you, it's all a different story. Suddenly, the power of numbers that Twitter claims not to care about comes into play.

If a trolling account becomes "well known" due to abusive tweets sent to celebrities it becomes a double-edged sword. the retweeting and mentoins feed their attention seeking behaviour but it seems that it is ALSO the only way to make Twitter (or a higher authority) react.

It seems that if you are an influential person, you can get the power of media onto your side and get something done about inapporpriate tweeting, be it from twitter, the police or the real life employers of the Twitter user. And by influential person, i include even Keith chegwin! When a local BBC reporter used her PERSONAL twitter (she stated all opinions were her own) to give her negative opinion on the ex-BBC Tv persoanlity (she said his voice made her feel sick) Keith kicked up a fuss and she was made to apologise.

Twitter-star Lilly Allen also used her own influence and power to get a soldier who made an off colour remark to her (it seemed racist but the intent was unclear, it may have been a typing/grammar error) to get him into trouble with his superiors in the army.

But what of us "common people", those of us who don't have the money and ability to pursue a civil case through the courts? If Twitter won't help and the police find their hands tied, what do we do? We don't have the masses and the media behind us - the Daily Mail aren't going to print an outraged story that I was called a peadophile - where do we turn?

It seems that for Twitter we don't matter. Our hurt, our reputation, our lives aren't enough to warrant doing something to protect us from abuse.

We've already won the race

As my twitter account is testament to, I sobbed, swore, exclaimed, laughed and clapped my way through the utterly glorious Olympic Opening Ceremony last night. I am generally not interested in the Olympics themselves (like my infamous childish declaration that "these chips have too much potato in them", I'd like the Olympics more if they had less sport in them) but I love a good show and Danny Boyle gave us that in spades.

Far greater writers than me have today put into words how well the entire show captured what we, the people on the street, know to be the true spirit of Britishness. From the things that inspire us (great literature, landscape and music), to the things that make us laugh (A monarch with a sense of humour, farce and farts), to the things that bring us sadness (the loss of the innocent past, the loss of innocence of childhood and the loss of lives), to the things that drive us daily (hard work, the health of our families and love) - all were depicted in a wondrous technicolour dance.

So it sadness and angers me greatly to see the complaints that it was somehow too left-wing, too working-class - and worst of all - too multi-cultural.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s in a large Scottish city, I wasn't exposed to many cultures. In primary school, there was one African boy who would rub his big, round Afro and give each of us curious, fascinated kids a little bit of his springy black hair. One year we had Vietnamese twins in class, who flirted like mad, grinned and played a mean game of Heads Down, Thumbs Up, but I learnt nothing of Vietnam. By primary school, I knew a coupe of Indian kids and knew snippets about their religion and how it differed from my own Presbyterian upbringing. Racism was something I knew about only from TV and the news. I knew I hated it (at age 8 I drew an anti-Apartheid poster) but I didn't experience the glory of mixed cultures until much later in life.

In fact, it is only NOW I have read journalists talking about how unrealistic it is to find an educated, middle-aged, mixed race family living HAPPILY that I stopped and thought that I've not only witnessed it - it's part of my family.

In 2005, I travelled from my home in Dundee, Scotland to London to attend the wedding of my wonderful older brother at the beautiful Battersea Arts Centre. It was one of the best days of my life for so many reasons - surrounded by my family, on an amazingly gorgeous day, in stunning surroundings celebrating the happy event of my brother's commitment of love to his Londoner Indian bride.

All the things that certain right-wing commentators claim don't exist was there. The bride and groom were both from working class parents. My late father was a systems analyst in a factory, my mother was a cleaner and carer. My sister-in-law's father was a grocer and her late mother a stay at home Mum. She spent the early part of her life in Kenya before growing up in council housing in east London, while my brothers and I grew up in council housing in one of the poorest housing schemes in Scotland.

Yet, these two people had brains and a hard-work ethic drilled into them by their families. Both left university with degrees and both ended up working in the City in London. However, they never met.

It is here, that the other theme of the Olympic Opening Show is connected to their story - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide Web - because this story is a truly digital age tale of love. My brother had fallen in love with computing ever since his Basic "10. You smell of poo 20. Go to line 10" days and was now a software engineer. My sister-in-law had taken a much more diverse route but ended up working in the usability area of a mobile phone company. It seems fitting then, that it took the Internet to bring them together. Yes, like my husband and I - my brother met his wife online dating.


And so like Frankie and June in last night's show - they fell in love. And less than 2 years after their first email exchange, I was at their wedding as a witness to their love.

On the day it was simply a day of love and meeting new family and friends, but looking at it from a purely factual point of view the multiculturalism rolled through the day in a delight of colour and laughter. The families of the happy couple wore suits and kilts, saris and sherwanis. (The kilted men expressed their envy of those in the cool linen loose trousers and tunics as they sweated in unseasonably warm weather under their yards and yards of heavy wool). The civil ceremony was followed by a Scottish lunch (shepherd's pie and cranachan) and later everyone devoured a spicy, Indian buffet.

The traditions of east and west mixed, the drink flowed and in the evening I did my bit as I took the stage to lead everyone in some traditional Scottish dancing. I called out the moves to the experts and the enthusiastic uninitiated alike. It became a whirl of laughter, squeals and hysterics as people were swung around and around by people they barely knew. Saris and kilts swirled; kids were lifted off their feet, the confused were ushered around the dance floor and the voices that rang out lilted with accents from London, Manchester, Dundee, India, USA, Canada, France, Taiwan. The "Eightsome Reel" became the "Elevensome reel" and people told me later it was the most fun they'd had in a long time.

No one cared what colour anyone's skin was, what country they came from, how much their father earned or which god they prayed to. We were all people who cared about a couple who were declaring their love and commitment to each other and us all.

THAT is what I know of multiculturalism. That is the Britain I know that exists now in the 21st century. They are middle-aged, educated and happy? Well, my most beautiful perfect almost 5-year-old niece is a testimony to that.

She is Indian and Scottish; Hindu and Protestan; she teaches me Gujarati words and what she knows about narwhals; she kisses me and tells me she loves me but that I need to clean my bedroom more.

So yes, they're happy. And more than that, we're happy. We're happy my brother found the love of his life; we're happy she brings new wonderful things and people into our family; we're happy the union gave me my only niece and my Mum's only grandchild. Race doesn't even come into it.