Women are abused every 30 seconds on Twitter, says study

London, Dec 26: Offence against women is not something new to talk out but the worry is that they are facing the worse even in the virtual world like social media, as in the real world. A major study conducted by Amnesty International has found an incredible fact and that is women are abused on the social media platform of Twitter every 30 seconds on an average!

A report in Mashable India spoke about the survey which was conducted with global artificial intelligence software firm Element AI. It analysed 228,000 tweets sent to 778 women politicians and journalists in the UK and US last year and concluded that 1.1 million "abusive or problematic tweets" were sent to the women at an average rate of one every 30 seconds.

It was also found that women with coloured complexion were targeted more compared to those with white complexion. It said black women were 84 per cent more likely to be abused than white women through mean tweets.

The study also revealed that women who faced the abuse were "across the political spectrum" in both the US and UK.

The research saw the setting up of the "world's largest crowdsourced dataset" about online abuse against women, as per Amnesty International's senior advisor for tactical research, Milena Marin, the Mashable India report said.

Marin said the dataset reiterates what women have been complaining about: That Twitter is a place where racism, misogyny and homophobia are rampant and unchecked.

"Twitter's failure to crack down on this problem means it is contributing to the silencing of already marginalised voices," she was quoted as saying.

Twitter's legal, policy, trust and safety global lead Vijaya Gadde told Mashable that the micro-blogging site has "publicly committed to improving the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation on our service."