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Glitch working with BT on major new campaign to tackle online abuse

During the campaign, we provided training to upskill the BT, EE & BT Sport teams to become good digital citizens. The Glitch team helped develop an algorithmic abuse tool to track the levels of abuse on Twitter as well as shape new research which sadly confirms how increasingly unsafe our online spaces are.

The data reveals that more than one in ten of us have received online abuse in the last year. It’s alarming how commonplace online abuse has become, especially when looking at statistics regarding women and marginalised communities who are more likely to receive abuse, with 47% of social media users seeing racist abuse online.

  • More than one in ten, over 10.6 million people, have received online abuse in the last 12 months
  • 10,000 social media users in the UK read online abuse every minute
  • Abuse is worse for women: one in five women have experienced abuse about their appearance
  • One in three people who identify as gay & lesbian have received online abuse about their sexual orientation
  • One in eight believe that those working in the public eye should expect abuse.

You may have seen us on TV as part of the campaign, sharing ways in which we, as digital citizens, can help Draw The Line. It’s no longer good enough to just not post abuse online nor to close our eyes to the abuse online, or disregard it as banter.  We all need to act. Because until we – individuals, and social media companies especially – all commit to taking action, this problem won’t go away.

Find out more about Draw the Line from BT here.

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We are campaigning to ensure that online abuse against women, and its disproportionate impact on racialised and minoritised communities, is reflected in the Online Safety Bill.

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