With every positive that comes with the digital world, there is of course a negative. Most recently, the topic that’s come to our attention has been the escalation of online abuse on social media, asking us to question just how such sites are planning a crackdown.

As of late last year, Pew Research found that over 60% of Internet users had witnessed another online member being called something offensive, while 53% had seen efforts made to purposefully embarrass someone. A quarter of respondents had themselves been physically threatened, with around the same amount having been continually harassed for a sustained period of time. In addition, 19% were witnesses to others being sexually harassed online, and 18% reported seeing another user stalked. Many stated that they themselves had been a victim of online abuse, with 27% experiencing offensive name-calling. The statistics show that trolling and harassment is rife, but why is it on the rise? Many attribute this to social anonymity, and the fact that creating multiple accounts for malicious activity is also easy to do.

So what’s being done to target the problem? In perhaps the greatest effort from Twitter to combat abuse, the site announced just a couple of weeks ago that it would be instigating new rules to deal with trolls and online abusers. This was in response to the fact that the site now reportedly receives a staggering five times as many abuse reports than it did just six months ago, and as a result had to triple the number of staff to deal with these complaints. One of the ways in which Twitter hopes to crack-down on rule breakers is by tracking their phone numbers and email addresses, meaning repeat offenders will be stopped from creating new accounts as the verification process requires both these details in order to use the site. Twitter has already enabled users to flag abusive tweets and block certain accounts, but this new move should help keep banned users off the site, and bar those who consistently cause trouble. The site’s CEO, Dick Costolo, is likely eager to crack down on trolls, because the problem impacts upon user numbers, many who are deterred from frequent account activity if they face harassment.

In addition to these new rules, Twitter also recently announced its intention to ban users from posting “revenge porn”, stating in its updated privacy section that users “may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject’s consent.” Users who disobey will have their accounts locked unless they remove the offending content, and repeat offenders will have their accounts suspended. Twitter’s actions come at a time when harassment, especially that of a sexual nature is high, and slowly being dealt with, as seen by Reddit’s crackdown on leaked celebrity photos once and for all. The site though, is quite late to implement stricter policies, as platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr and Google Plus have already upped their spend into the millions, with monitoring teams working consistently to delete images of explicit and illegal content, including child abuse, and nude and violent images. We hope Twitter’s new features will assuage the amount of negative content witnessed on the site, and that they will deter trolls for good.

Have you noticed the increase in the amount of online trolling or social media abuse? And have you ever been a victim of such activity? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comment on our Facebook page.