A Sampling Of Twitter Vitriol

[updated 6:08 pm] It’s been years since I moderated the U.S. politics forums at About.com. And I don’t spend a lot of time on general interest (read newspaper) websites in the comments sections. So I’d kinda sorta forgotten about what passes for acceptable language in internet conversation with a stranger of the opposite gender.

This is nothing like the response feminist Caroline Criado-Perez experienced after her successful campaign to keep women among the honorees on Bank of England banknotes. That escalated from public name calling and a claim that she needed forced anal sex to put her in her place to widespread misogyny and threats of sexual violence.

NSFW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the “conversation” referenced in the Storify:

 

 

 

You could make the logical case that a guy in Canada (assuming bio info is accurate) is not making a viable threat of rape to women in the UK.

That’s not the point.

The point is that he is using the medium to harass and intimidate. He (or she) can do this in part because of pseudo-anonymity.

Twitter’s “block” feature is designed in part to protect against this kind of harassment. Block someone and tweets from that account do not show up in your timeline. But it’s relatively easy to set up a new account on Twitter, so a determined person can escalate. That’s when Twitter’s report abusive behavior option — report the account not the tweet — comes into play because this behavior is against the TOS.

I’ll be posting a recap of what to do if you feel attacked on Twitter or Facebook later today.

UPDATED / NSFW

All accounts have been blocked. These screen caps were mid-afternoon Sunday Pacific. ALL Twitter interaction began as a result of my letting @n1k__nak know that he had a tweet in the Storify, a common courtesy.