Stella Creasy, a British member of Parliament, has received a number of threats on the social networking site Twitter, the latest of which is a picture of a masked man wielding a knife and the text “I’m gonna be the first thing u seen when u wake up”.
This latest threat comes days after Creasy and other women who are in the public eye have denounced and unmasked the culture of sexist abuse and threats against women that’s thriving online.
Twitter is at the heart of this debate right now, with many women such as Creasy, journalists India Knight and Laurie Penny and even historian Mary Beard having received death threats, bomb scares and other forms of abuse. The social network has very recently clarified its stance on such abuse saying that it’s “simply not acceptable”, expanding its staff that deals with reported users and tweets and banning the users that have sent such threats.
The women in question have all reported threats to the police and Scotland Yard is working with Twitter to punish those implicated as threatening somebody is a punishable offense by law.
While trolling, horrible grammar and baffling stupidity have unfortunately become commonplace on the internet, life threats are a serious offense and both Twitter and the police urge everyone to report such incidents as soon as they are noticed.
Source and Image: The Guardian
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