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Facebook, Twitter, and harassment: What can be done?

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When Tess Holliday started getting horrible Facebook messages from a hateful stranger she wasn’t particularly surprised. As a plus-sized model, and a woman on the Internet, she gets this sort of thing all the time. 

What did surprise her was Facebook’s response to this harassment – they banned her.

Tess tried to question the ban, but got no response. It was only a few days later, after she’d tweeted about it 

And the story had been picked up by the media, that Facebook changed their mind, claiming the ban was “in error”.

In another recent story, actress Leslie Jones was overwhelmed by floods of vicious hate when a Twitter harassment campaign was organised against her because she had acted in a movie the harassers didn’t like. Leslie publicly called on Twitter to do more to protect their users. 

Or most recently, and on our very own shores, Margaret Van Wyk is being harassed in the most despicable way. People are sharing a naked image of her without her consent - something which is both morally and legally indefensible - and both platforms are doing very little about it.

These are just three examples of terrible ways Facebook and Twitter are handling abuse and harassment on their sites, but they’re two of many. There was that time it took media coverage before Facebook finally shut down a group dedicated to encouraging and organizing harassment and sexual violence against women

Or that time Facebook banned a nudity-free photo of a plus-sized model in a bikini for depicting “body parts in an undesirable manner”. 

Let’s not forget that time Facebook refused to take down a video in which a woman is violently assaulted by three men, who tear her dress off her, because they claimed it “doesn’t violate our community standards”. 

Or that time Facebook warned a page for sharing a photo of a plus-sized woman in her wedding dress for showing “too much flesh”.

Sure, Twitter eventually banned professional harasser Milo Yiannopolos, who had instigated the mob against Leslie Jones. This was a good start, but it was also too little and too late. Milo had been using Twitter to organize harassment mobs against anyone he decided to paint a target on for years, but Twitter only acted when the victim was famous and the story about her harassment had gone viral.

Twitter only acted when the victim was famous and the story about her harassment had gone viral

Other professional harassers like Jack Barnes, who has threatened that the harassment of feminists will continue to escalate until no one will openly admit to being a feminist anymore, and who has more than once called on his followers to harass feminists for this exact purpose, and Roosh V, who organises a yearly “fat shaming week”, are still using Twitter for their harassment campaigns.

Now, it seems the internet is taking things into its own hands. There has been a steady increase in talk about and articles on online harassment and how to report or respond to it from publications like Lena Dunham’s Lenny letters to Buzzfeed.

Buzzfeed has also recently created a harassment survey where it asks its readers to help them “get a better understanding of how Twitter handles abusive tweets”by asking a series of questions similar to Twitter’s report abuse forms, but also asking readers to tell their stories in full if they feel so obliged.

Facebook and Twitter both claim to care about providing a safe and pleasant platform for their users. If these sites are serious about protecting their users from harassment, they need to do a lot better than this.  

Facebook and Twitter both claim to care about providing a safe and pleasant platform for their users.

I’m not even calling for major action here. Just a change in how they deal with their users here and there. Facebook could start by not banning people for fatphobic reasons, and both could actually take action when someone is using their platform to target and harass others before it gets so bad it goes viral.

You know, the bare minimum.

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