Pressure on Twitter to install ‘report abuse’ button

There are calls for Twitter to add the button so that users can flag up aggressive and intimidating behaviour on the social networking site.

It follows a sustained tirade of abuse against Caroline Criado-Perez, one of the women behind the campaign to get a woman – Jane Austen – onto a British banknote.

After Wednesday’s announcement, when the new-look notes (below) were revealed by the Bank of England, Ms Criado-Perez experienced first overwhelming praise but then a sudden bombardment of increasingly vicious tweets, including rape threats.

“Soon, I was overwhelmed in a very different way,” she explained.

“…overwhelming horror at the vehement hatred some men still feel for women who don’t ‘know their place’.”

Read more from Channel 4 News: How to beat the trolls

Ms Criado-Perez claimed that complaints to Twitter had fallen on deaf ears.

Manager of Journalism and News at Twitter, Mark Luckie, appeared to have “locked” his account following numerous requests for him to address the issue.

Tony Wang, the general manager of Twitter UK, said that the company takes online abuse seriously.

He tweeted: “We encourage users to report an account for violation of the Twitter rules by using one of our report form.

“Also, we’re testing ways to simplify reporting, e.g. within a Tweet by using the ‘Report Tweet’ button in our iPhone app and on mobile web.

“We will suspend accounts that, once reported to us, are found to be in breach of our rules.”

More than 10,000 people have added their names to a petition calling for a “report abuse” button.

Organiser Kim Graham said: “It is time Twitter took a zero tolerance policy on abuse, and learns to tell the difference between abuse and defence.”

Those of you crying “censorship” “just words” – it took about an hour for them to start tweeting out what they thought was my home address.

— CarolineCriado-Perez (@CCriadoPerez) July 27, 2013

There are a lot of pathetic, insecure men cowering behind twitter accounts. There are far more men ready to stand with @CCriadoPerez

— Jon Thomas (@malvernjon) July 27, 2013

So. Morons have been tweeting rape threats to @CCriadoPerez but @twitter says it’s not their problem. Disagree? Sign http://t.co/50M9Vi6Wiv

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) July 27, 2013

@CCriadoPerez congrats on the outcome of your campaign, disgusting that you’ve suffered threats, I hope the police deal with them!

— Cenydd Blackwell (@Sir_Wulfrick) July 27, 2013

@CCriadoPerez glad someone is refusing to stay quiet and taking a stand against trolls, the way they behave is unacceptable

— Zishaan Saleem (@zishaan_saleem) July 27, 2013