Twitter has partnered with non-profit Women, Action & the Media (WAM) to help its users report abuse and harassment through an online tool.
The women advocacy group created an online form that will allow people to report credible incidents. The project is expected to gather better responses for women and help Twitter improve how it handles such reports. The company has been criticized because of its poor response to abuse, even if it claims to work with various groups.
"WAM will escalate validated reports to Twitter and track Twitter's response to different kinds of gendered harassment," the group said in a release. "At the end of the pilot test period, WAM will analyze the collected data and use it to work with Twitter to better understand how gendered harassment functions on their platform, and to improve their responses to it."
The online tool will track abuse and harassment reports from both men and women – such as impersonation, posting false information, hate speech, revenge porn, and more. Users can report on behalf of another person and when they fear for their own personal safety. It also asks if the issue has been reported to Twitter more than once.
WAM has a 24-hour turnaround time to get a response from Twitter. The findings of the pilot will be released to the public, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The announcement came after the issue of online harassment resurfaced because of the "GamerGate" controversy in the video game industry. The problem began in August when the game developer's ex-boyfriend accused her of cheating with a video game journalist. This led to harassment not only targeted to Zoe Quinn but also to her supporters who are mostly women. The hashtag #gamergate began when a flood reports of online harassment that forced some women to flee from their homes due to safety concerns.
