More than 66K people petition Twitter for ‘report abuse’ button

After watching people hurl rape threats at one woman on Twitter, another is demanding the social network release a “report abuse” button, and she’s got a hoard of people backing her up.

Caroline Criado-Perez pushed for the Bank of England to print more women on the country’s currency. But while author Jane Austin will now appear on the 10 pound note, many seem to be upset about the change and are directing their fury toward Perez on Twitter. The rape threats and abusive tweets inspired Kim Graham to create a Change.org petition to get a “report abuse” button installed on every Twitter account page.

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Thus far, over 66,000 people have signed the petition.

“It is time Twitter took a zero-tolerance policy on abuse and learns to tell the difference between abuse and defense,” the petition reads. “Women standing up to abuse should not fear having their accounts cancelled because Twitter fail to see the issue at hand.”

Twitter does provide a way to report abuse, but it’s not obvious on the site. The option is, however, buried on its support page. One of the reasons why a clear button on every page might not already exist is because it takes a lot of resources to run a customer service line for issues like these. Indeed, some companies have built entire technologies around not having to take a phone call. Facebook’s abuse report system goes so far as to help you work it out any issues among members instead of pulling in a Facebook mediator.

This could be something that Twitter might consider, but Facebook’s system often hinges itself on the existing relationship between two people. It expects that you care. But in Twitter’s case, many of your followers don’t actually know you and likely don’t care how you feel.

hat tip The Mary Sue