Are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter Hiding Female Abuse Data?

NEW YORK: Are YouTube, Facebook and Twitter hiding responses related to female harassment? If we believe a new study, the social media firms are not faring well on publishing abuse-reporting data.

The report, released as part of the Association for Progressive Communications' "Take Back the Tech" campaign and commissioned by the Dutch government, analysed the microblogging site Twitter, social networking site Facebook, and video-sharing site YouTube's user policies and their public response to international abuse incidents over the past five years.

It analysed the statistics from the three social media firms over the past five years, researching their responses and transparency regarding harassment.

Facebook fared the best of the three in the report, the Washington Post reported.

"These companies are responsible to their users yet so much of what they do happens behind closed doors," Sara Baker, a global coordinator with "Take Back the Tech" campaign, was quoted as saying.

"We would love to see data on how many people submit reports, their general demographics (including country and language) and the overall results of those reports. We also want to know more about the people making decisions behind the scenes. What countries do they live in? How are they trained?" Baker asked.

YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all rely on user reports to flag inappropriate or abusive content.

When someone flags something on YouTube, the content is surfaced to a 24-hour team for review.

"Take Back The Tech" is a global campaign that connects the issue of violence against women and information and communications technology (ICT).