It’s funny so long as celebrities are reading mean tweets on Jimmy Kimmel Live. But when the Twitter trolls come out of the darkness, loaded with threats and racist slurs, you can be sure no one’s laughing.
Political and ideological groups have set up social media wings with the sole purpose of controlling the narrative that affects them. Daesh is infamous for using social media to propogate its hateful rhetoric and a New York Times special report in June 2015 showed how an organised ‘troll farm’ was able to not just spread pro-Kremlin propoganda but also induce panic or stage hoaxes.
But the misuse of Twitter does not just happen at the hands of organised groups. The potential anonymity that Twitter offers can bring out the worst in most people. A UK-based think tank Demos conducted a study in 2015 on the prevelance of racism on Twitter, recording 6,777,955 “slurs” in two weeks, according to Mirror Online.
Twitter is not oblivious to this misuse. Apart from actively monitoring accounts and suspending those that are in violation of its rules, the company set up a ‘Trust & Safety Council’ on February 9, 2016, “to ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter”.
