WebProNews

Tag: online harassment

  • Twitter Rolls Out ‘Hide Replies’ to Developers

    Twitter Rolls Out ‘Hide Replies’ to Developers

    Twitter’s Hide Replies feature is now available to developers as an API that can be included in their own software.

    Twitter, as well as most social media platforms, have been under fire for not always doing enough to combat trolls and online harassment. Back in November, Twitter unveiled the Hide Replies feature, giving users more power over the discussion in their threads.

    Now the company is making the Hide Replies API available to developers so they can include that same functionality in their tools. According to TechCrunch, “these sorts of tools will be of particular interest to businesses and brands who maintain a Twitter presence, but whose accounts often get too many replies to tweets to properly manage on an individual basis. With Hide Replies now available as a new API endpoint, developers can create tools that automatically hide disruptive tweets based on factors important to their customers — like tweets that include certain prohibited keywords or those that score high for being toxic, for example.”

    Twitter worked with a small group of developers prior to the API’s launch and the company says it is making improvements based on their feedback. It remains to be seen if the feature will be a success or not, as some critics worry it could create as many problems as it attempts to solve if it ends up being used to censor speech.

  • ‘Severe’ Online Harassment Affects Nearly Half of Those Targeted

    If you’re active on social media, discussion sites, or comment boards, there’s a very high probability that you’re familiar with online harassment – whether you’ve experienced it or simply witnessed it. People can be terrible, and when you give them a cloak of anonymity things become even worse.

    Pew Research Center has just put out their first-ever survey entirety focused on online harassment and cyberbullying. What they found is that nearly 3 in 4 (73 percent) of people have seen someone being harassed online, while 40 percent claim to have experienced that harassment themselves.

    And when it comes to this harassment, it’s not just name calling. That’s a lot easier to ignore. According to Pew, a large percentage of those harassed report ‘severe’ forms of it.

    “Of those who have been harassed online, 55% (or 22% of all internet users) have exclusively experienced the ‘less severe’ kinds of harassment while 45% (or 18% of all internet users) have fallen victim to any of the ‘more severe’ kinds of harassment.” says Pew.

    Pew defines these ‘severe’ forms of online harassment as physical threats, stalking, longtime harassment of any kind, and sexual harassment.

    Of course, being called an offensive name is still a form of harassment – but stalking and threats of violence take it to a whole other level.

    Pew found that men were more likely to experience ‘less-severe’ forms of online harassment, while women were more apt to have to deal with sexual harassment and stalking. Young women (aged 18-24) in particular, are much more likely to be harassed.

    Pews’s study is pretty extensive, and you can read it all here.

    Image via Pew