There's a new way to report harassment against women on Twitter

While the power of anonymity the internet provides guarantees that everyone can be a target of harassment, women seem to be attacked more on social media. Those attacks have escalated these past months on Twitter, in particular, that's why non-profit org Women, Action and the Media (WAM) has joined forces with the microblogging site to address the issue. Now, anyone who's experiencing gendered harassment can use WAM's new Twitter Harassment Reporting tool to submit a detailed complaint. Through the tool, a complainant can make sure the website knows exactly what kind of abuse she's experiencing, such as impersonation, racism, sexism, (homophobic/transphobic) hate speech, doxxing, rape/death threats, and revenge porn among other things. And yes, all these happen in real life -- just look at these vitriolic tweets Buzzfeed compiled for starters.

Twitter will still be the one to decide what to do in the end, but WAM will escalate validated reports to the service, and monitor Twitter's responses. The organization chose to act at this point in time, because it believes gendered harassment has reached critical levels on social media -- if you recall, a number of female game developers and personalities recently had to flee their own homes after being doxxed or receiving rape-and-death threats. In addition to helping women get their reports heard, WAM will also use the data it collects to understand how harassment against women intersects with other types of harassment, so Twitter can improve their response to specific situations.