Twitter's iPhone app now has a "Report Tweet" button.
Soon, web and Android users will as well.
Twitter’s Senior Director of Trust and Safety Del Harvey announced Monday the social network is implementing new methods to report abusive tweets. The news comes in response to an increasing number of violent threats on the site – specifically, a multi-day trolling campaign that saw U.K. journalist Caroline Criado-Perez receive as many as 50 rape threats per hour without a reliable way of reporting her attackers.
In a blog post titled “We hear you,” Harvey explained the company’s efforts to stop cyberbullying on the site. “Three weeks ago, we rolled out the ability to file reports from an individual tweet on our iPhone app and the mobile version of our site, and we plan to bring this functionality to Android and desktop web users.”
“We strive to make it easier and more practical to file (reports),” he added.
Currently, Android and desktop users of Twitter can only report abusive content using a reporting form located at support.twitter.com/forms. Each offending tweet must be singled out, and a number of details regarding why it’s being reported are required. The process is arduous and, as Criado-Perez points out, an impractical way of reporting multiple offenses.
“When you’re under a sustained attack like I have been for the past 48 hours or so, you simply can’t be expected to fill out forms, find the link for each tweets, and explain what’s wrong with it. It needs to be a one-click automated process,” Criado-Perez wrote in an email to CNET.
There is no word yet on how long implementation of the new reporting features will take.
