Zelda Williams Forces Twitter To Rethink Its Woeful Anti-Trolls Policy
Twitter's policies of protecting its users are out-of-date and inadequate, and it took a pretty horrible incident for something to change.
It only took Twitter trolls one day to start spamming Zelda Williams’ social media accounts following the tragic passing of her father, Robin Williams.
After posting a heart-wrenching goodbye to her father on Tumblr, some jerks began spamming Williams with what she describes as “cruel and unnecessary comments” – though considering the content of the messages on Twitter included Photoshopped images of Robin Williams with bruises around his neck, “cruel” is definitely an understatement.
I’m sorry. I should’ve risen above. Deleting this from my devices for a good long time, maybe forever. Time will tell. Goodbye.
— Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) August 13, 2014
Today, Twitter offered a response to Williams’ understandable retreat from the social network. Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, Del Harvey, said: “We have suspended a number of accounts related to this issue for violating our rules and we are in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies to better handle tragic situations like this one. This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users.”
Twitter already has a system which allows users to report abuse, but it’s seriously flawed. In a since-deleted tweet, Williams pleaded: “Please report @PimpStory @MrGoosebuster. I’m shaking. I can’t. Please. Twitter requires a link and I won’t open it. Don’t either. Please.”
Too bad the Twitter Help Centre for reporting abusive behaviour says: “We are unable to respond to requests from uninvolved parties regarding those issues to mitigate the likelihood of false or unauthorised reports. If you are not an authorised representative but you are in contact with the individual, encourage the individual to file a report through our forms”. So when a clearly distressed Zelda Williams asked her followers to report the abuse, they were simply unable to.
The policy also means that targets of the abuse are forced to read the messages or tweets again if they want to report them. In a brilliant article in The Atlantic, Marry Anne Franks said practises like these come with a “real psychological cost” to the user and discourage bystanders from getting involved, “effectively reward[ing] abusers while discouraging support, solidarity, and intervention for their victims”.
And although users can block accounts, very little stands in the way of trolls setting up new accounts to continue the abuse.
Hopefully a review in Twitter’s policies will stop these trolls in the midst of already devastating circumstances – or at least drive the abusers off the network, rather than the target.
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Feature image via Robin Williams’ Instagram