Twitter is fast gaining a reputation as a social media medium that cannot be trusted due to its inconsistent approach towards abuse and harassment.

In many cases, Conservative voices are frequently silenced and suspended for expressing nothing more than a point of view.

Over the past few years, critics of gender ideology, feminists and pro-life campaigners and scientists who question the efficacy of the Covid vaccine have all been banned because their points of view are deemed to be offensive or ‘harmful’.

On the other hand, despite the introduction of rules to keep users safe, Twitter is happy to allow discussion of paedophilia and promotion of pornography and is also beset with anonymous abusive trolls who aim to drive individuals off the platform and prevent them from engaging in the digital world, with campaigns of personal abuse and harassment.

One such recent example is Northern Ireland MP Diane Dodds, targeted by a troll over the Christmas period. An anonymous account responded to Mrs Dodds ‘Happy New Year’s message with taunts about her deceased nine-year-old son.

This behaviour sickened every right-thinking person, yet the platform did not believe that the post contravened any of its rules regarding abuse and harassment and allowed the tweet and the account to remain. It later transpired the same account had been engaged in a three-year online campaign of harassment towards a man who witnessed his father’s murder as a child.

CitizenGO campaign director Caroline Farrow has been the subject of years of prolonged abuse from a group of dedicated activists and personal haters. Over the past few years, one Twitter account has been outing personal details and even abusing her school-aged children. Yet, despite repeated reports, Twitter refuses to do anything about the account and others like it.

Caroline is not the only victim of this account which has also repeatedly targeted a deaf woman who recently lost her partner, a man whose mother was dying of Alzheimer’s and a young widow whose young son was recovering from cancer.

This account is not an isolated incident. There are thousands of people being caused enormous psychological distress and resulting mental health problems as a result of cyber-trolling on the platform both because circumnavigating Twitter’s security procedures is straightforward and also because Twitter’s enforcement team don’t appear to employ human beings or apply any common sense.

Twitter needs to take the following steps:

• Have a verification process so that users can be held accountable

• Have a dedicated customer service team staffed by humans, not algorithms, to ensure abusive accounts are swiftly removed
  
  
  

It is not enough to tell users simply to block abusive accounts. Twitter is a public platform that anyone can read across the world, regardless of whether or not they have an account. 

Sign our petition demanding that Twitter takes steps to clean up their act.