Twitter MUST stop vile abuse of female MPs who get violent and racist threats, says Amnesty International
A report found that Diane Abbott received nearly half of all sexist abuse during the election
TWITTER must do more to crack down on the horrific abuse of female MPs, a report from Amnesty International said last night.
The respected charity slammed the web giant after it discovered thousands of threatening tweets aimed at high-profile politicians - which were all allowed to stay online.
Amnesty called on Twitter to spend more money removing abusive messages as soon as they are posted, and educate all members of staff in how to prevent online bullying.
The charity yesterday published a report analysing more than 25,000 pieces of abuse sent via Twitter to female MPs from across the political spectrum.
It found that the worst-affected were non-white politicians - who often faced insults which were not only sexist but outright racist.
During the election campaign, nearly half of all abusive tweets to women MPs were directed at Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary.
Ms Abbott told Amnesty that she can get “hundreds of items of abuse” on some days, with trolls calling her the N-word, saying she is a “prostitute” and threatening violence.
Shortly after the General Election, she spoke out in Parliament to reveal the scale of hatred directed at her - but this only made the problem worse.
She told Amnesty: “My office got flooded with communications, both by letter and by email. People sent us emails and letters full of swastikas, people sent us postcards and letters with pictures of monkeys and chimps.
“People sent us hundreds of emails using the word n***** - that’s the sort of response we get. It’s highly racialised and it’s also gendered because people talk about rape and they talk about my physical appearance in a way they wouldn’t talk about a man.”
The other women to receive the brunt of the abuse during the election were Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Labour’s Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner, and Joanna Cherry of the SNP.
Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh, who lost her bid to be re-elected as an SNP MP, told Amnesty that when she appeared on TV her Twitter account was flooded with messages calling her to be sexually assaulted.
Asked about the emotional damage of the non-stop trolling, she said: “Internally, it hurts a lot. It really, really hurts a lot. It’s personal.”
Amnesty pointed out that most of the examples picked up by its algorithms were several months old - but had still not been deleted by Twitter.
The charity said: “It’s clear that Twitter needs to invest more resources to enforce adequate and transparent reporting mechanisms that users have confidence in utilising.
“Training about the various ways online abuse manifests on the platform, including specific attention to gender and other identity-based abuse, should be mandatory for all staff members, including developers, researchers, and especially moderators.”
The report concluded that if companies such as Twitter don’t take action, women could be forced out of politics because they don’t want to face non-stop harassment.
A spokesman for Twitter told The Sun: "Abuse and harassment have no place on Twitter. We've introduced a range of new tools and features to improve our platform for everyone, and we're now taking action on ten times the number of abusive accounts every day then the same time in 2016. We will continue to build on these efforts and meet the challenge head on."
Company sources also cast doubt on the numbers used by Amnesty, suggesting that the 25,000 figure could exaggerate the scale of the problem.
After the election Theresa May set up a commission to investigate abuse faced by politicians and candidates, following concerns the trolling could drive talented people out of public life.