  When people experience harassment online, from individual threats or
invective to coordinated campaigns of harassment, they have the option to
report the harassers and content to the platform where the harassment has
occurred. Platforms then evaluate harassment reports against terms of use and
other policies to decide whether to remove content or take action against the
alleged harasser--or not. On Twitter, harassing accounts can be deleted
entirely, suspended (with content made unavailable pending appeal or specific
changes), or sent a warning. Some platforms, including Twitter and YouTube,
grant authorized reporters or trusted flaggers special privileges to identify
and report inappropriate content on behalf of others. In November 2014, Twitter
granted Women, Action, and the Media (WAM!) this authorized reporter status. In
three weeks, WAM! reviewers assessed 811 incoming reports of harassment and
escalated 161 reports to Twitter, ultimately seeing Twitter carry out 70
account suspensions, 18 warnings, and one deleted account. This document
presents findings from this three-week project; it draws on both quantitative
and qualitative methods. Findings focus on the people reporting and receiving
harassment, the kinds of harassment that were reported, Twitter's response to
harassment reports, the process of reviewing harassment reports, and challenges
for harassment reporting processes.
