Twitter introduced a "report abuse" button for individual tweets on August 28, 2013, after a U.K. woman was harassed on the social network last month.
Reporting abuse on Twitter has now been simplified on all platforms, including desktop web, mobile web, iOS and Android apps. After female journalists and a member of Parliament were harassed and threatened with rape on the social network with no easy way to report the abuse, Twitter launches the feature as a mean to make abuse reporting easier.
Before the change, Twitter users had to search its site to figure out how to report abuse. Now, there's a simple button located directly on users' accounts that takes them to Twitter's help center to file an abuse report.
The help center also states that if an interaction has gone beyond the point of name calling and users feel as though they are in danger, they should contact their local authorities so they can accurately assess the validity of the threat and help them resolve the issue offline.
Twitter explains that removing the threatening statements does not make the issue between individuals go away in real life.
The motive for the new feature started when U.K. activist Caroline Criado-Perez successfully lobbied to have novelist Jane Austen featured on a U.K. banknote. For the next 48 hours she was repeatedly threatened with rape on Twitter .
Shortly after, one of Criado-Perez's followers launched a Change.org petition asking Twitter to make its abuse reporting procedures easier. According to Change.org, the petition have got 139,000 signatures.
It's great that Twitter has listened," Criado-Perez said in a statement. "There are still issues: users have to agree for the report to be potentially shared with the harasser and there are some boxes that could be auto-populated that aren't, but overall, this is a fantastic first step."
For it's part, Twitter announced it would make the change earlier this month. Coincidentally, it had already made the switch for iOS apps and the mobile web before the U.K. abuse report.
"We actually started introducing the reporting function many weeks before that petition," said a Twitter spokesperson. Twitter responded that it was already working to include easier reporting tools and had released a similar report abuse feature for individual tweets. This button was only available on Twitter's iOS app at the time, but currently available on its Android app, and on the web.
"Starting with iOS apps and the mobile web, and now with Android and the desktop web."
The Twitter's spokesperson explained to Criado-Perez that it's dedicated to creating "a safe place for our users" and that it is "adding additional staff to the teams that handle abuse reports."
Two of Twitter's U.K executives, senior Director for Trust and Safety, Tony Wang and Del Harvey, said that "It comes down to this: people deserve to feel safe on Twitter."