It takes a celebrity sometimes. Twitter has been home to horrible hazing since its inception. For every joyful share of good news and aid in ousting a dictator Twitter provides, there’s a teenager somewhere feeling the savage shaming of insensitive idiots. This time though, the young person under Twitter assault from emotionally-stunted morons was Zelda Williams, famous daughter of the late actor Robin Williams. Zelda was forced to quit Twitter after being harassed by abusive Tweets in the wake of her father’s tragic death.
Twitter had to pay more careful attention to the abuse this time. This wasn’t some anonymous teen being bullied–this was a celebrity. Twitter already has rules against abuse, but they are hard to enforce. (Twitter is just the tool, after all, it’s the people who abuse it.) But this time Twitter reacted more forcefully, suspending some abusive accounts and saying in a statement that it is “in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies to better handle tragic situations like this one. This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users.”
