By Tony O'Riley-
British Mps must continue to challenge twitter bosses to address the level of excessive abuses that take place on the platform of the social media giant’s platform.
After the BBC revealed the despicable level of abuse Mps face on twitter, the responsibility now has to be on Members of parliament to put pressure on twitter to act fast.
Threatening abuses on twitter to Mps and politicians across the world have been reported before, but Mps are not doing enough to address the problem. The hard truth is that the duty is on twitter to find a remedy for threatening behaviour on its platform.
Maybe if twitter was heavily fined every time serious abuses were spotted on its platform, the social media’s CEO, Jack Dorsey will perform wonders and find a way to identify twitter users by registering them more effectively. Twitter have gradually been taking steps to improve the quality of its platform, but it may need to do a lot more.
The survey of MPs carried out by the broadcasting corporation between May and June in writing and by phone between May and July this year reportedly led to 172 responses from 629. The survey found that 139 said either they or their staff had faced abuse in the past year.
More than 60% (108) of those who replied said they had been in contact with the police about threats in the last 12 months. It doesn’t state why Mps receive these threats, besides reference to the death of IS Shamina Begum’s baby, or developments in Brexit negotiations.
The case of Shamina Begum’s baby, for example, is not difficult to examine. Begum deliberately affiliated herself with terrorists, so lost her British citizenship. The decision was right, but the fatal error Mps and the Home Office made was to say that the child was entitled to British citizenship, yet make no provision for the child to be brought to the Uk.
Such steps would have been impractical, separating mother and baby. This is the reason the child should have lost the right to British citizenship, since the entitlement was based on the mother’s status, which had been stripped. Anger over Begum’s baby’s death can be understood, but the mother was to blame.
As for Brexit negotiations, the mess made by heavily disunited Mps has never been a good look. But social media abusers have to be viewed as sick and mentally unstable human beings.