Twitter has made it easier to report threats made on the social network to law enforcement agencies with a new feature it launched today. Once a user has reported abuse on Twitter, they can push a button to have a report sent to their email with information about the involved parties, timestamps of the report and the threatening tweet, along with a link to Twitter’s law enforcement guidelines.
That’s designed to make it easy for people who are receiving threats of violence on the social network to bring that information to law enforcement, who will be in a better position than Twitter to help them follow up on the threats.
Of course, that may not actually lead to results, since law enforcement agencies are often woefully under-equipped to deal with online harassment. Still, these reports make the process easier for people who are under threat to follow up with an agency that might be able to assign some level of real world consequences to an online threat.
It’s another move by Twitter to double down on protecting its users from abuse. Earlier this year, the social networking company revamped its abuse reporting system to simplify the process of communicating with the company about harassment and abuse that was taking place. It also added reporting options for “doxing” (the practice of posting a user’s personal information online) and impersonation last month.
Twitter also has room to improve when it comes to reducing the harassment that takes place on its network. On numerous occasions, the company has told users that even particularly vile tweets are acceptable under its rules.
