SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
December, 17 2018, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7413 5566,After hours: +44 7778 472 126,Email:,press@amnesty.org
Crowdsourced Twitter Study Reveals Shocking Scale of Online Abuse Against Women
WASHINGTON
Amnesty International released a ground-breaking study into abuse against women on Twitter today, conducted with Element AI, a global artificial intelligence software product company. The findings showed that although the abuse cut across the political spectrum, women of color were much more likely to be impacted, and black women are disproportionately targeted.
More than 6,500 volunteers from 150 countries signed up to take part in Troll Patrol, a unique crowdsourcing project designed to process large-scale data about online abuse. Volunteers sorted through 228,000 tweets sent to 778 women politicians and journalists in the UK and the US in 2017.
Amnesty International and Element AI then used advanced data science and machine learning techniques to extrapolate data about the scale of abuse that women face on Twitter. Element AI calculated that 1.1 million abusive or problematic tweets were sent to the women in the study across the year - or one every 30 seconds on average.
"With the help of technical experts and thousands of volunteers, we have built the world's largest crowdsourced dataset about online abuse against women. Troll Patrol means we have the data to back up what women have long been telling us - that Twitter is a place where racism, misogyny and homophobia are allowed to flourish basically unchecked," said Milena Marin, Senior Advisor for Tactical Research at Amnesty International.
"Twitter's failure to crack down on this problem means it is contributing to the silencing of already marginalized voices."
Key findings
- Black women were disproportionately targeted, being 84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets. One in ten tweets mentioning black women was abusive or problematic, compared to one in fifteen for white women.
- 7.1% of tweets sent to the women in the study were problematic or abusive. This amounts to 1.1 million tweets mentioning 778 women across the year, or one every 30 seconds.
- Women of color, (black, Asian, Latinx and mixed-race women) were 34% more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women.
- Online abuse against women cuts across the political spectrum. Politicians and journalists faced similar levels of online abuse and we observed both liberals and conservatives alike, as well as left and right leaning media organizations, were affected.
Element AI used the data gathered in Troll Patrol to develop a machine learning model of an app which attempts to automatically detect abusive tweets. Element AI is making its model available to try out here for three weeks, to demonstrate the potential and current limitations of AI technology in this field.
"This study is part of a long-term partnership between Amnesty International and Element AI. Taking a sober approach to AI, we make long-term commitments, dedicating our technical experts and tools to enable social good actors to do what they do best," said Julien Cornebise, Director of Research, 'AI For Good' and Head of the London office of Element AI.
Politicians included in the sample came from across the US and UK political spectrums. The journalists included were from a diverse range of US and UK publications including The Daily Mail, The New York Times, Guardian, The Sun, GalDem, Pink News and Breitbart.
Amnesty International has repeatedly asked Twitter to publish data regarding the scale and nature of abuse on their platform, but so far the company has failed to do so. This hides the extent of the problem and makes it difficult to design effective solutions.
Troll Patrol volunteers collectively dedicated an incredible 2,500 hours analyzing tweets - the equivalent of someone working full-time for 1.5 years.
"By crowdsourcing research, we were able to build up vital evidence in a fraction of the time it would take one Amnesty researcher, without losing the human judgement which is so essential when looking at context around tweets," said Milena Marin.
"Troll Patrol isn't about policing Twitter or forcing it to remove content. We are asking it to be more transparent, and we hope that the findings from Troll Patrol will compel it to make that change. Crucially, Twitter must start being transparent about how exactly they are using machine learning to detect abuse, and publish technical information about the algorithms they rely on".
Background
Abusive content violates Twitter's own rules and includes tweets that promote violence against or threaten people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. Problematic content is defined as content that is hurtful or hostile, especially if repeated to an individual on multiple or cumulative occasions, but not as intense as an abusive tweet.
Amnesty International shared its findings with Twitter. In response, Twitter requested clarification on the definition of "problematic" "in accordance with the need to protect free expression and ensure policies are clearly and narrowly drafted."
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
LATEST NEWS
Trump Weighs Ultimate Gift to For-Profit Insurance Industry: Medicare Privatization
"They want to remove the guarantee of Medicare," one advocate said of the Trump administration's floated plan to automatically enroll seniors in Medicare Advantage.
Apr 10, 2026
The Trump administration is considering enacting a policy that would automatically funnel seniors into for-profit Medicare Advantage plans—which critics say would set Medicare on the path to full-scale privatization.
Chris Klomp, the Trump administration's director of Medicare and deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told STAT last month that enrolling seniors in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by default "is something that we're thinking through." MA plans are funded by the federal government and run by private insurance companies such as UnitedHealthcare and Humana, both of which have been accused of improperly denying necessary care to patients and overcharging taxpayers.
The default enrollment scheme was floated in the far-right Project 2025 agenda that President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to disavow. Currently, older Americans who have received Social Security benefits for at least four months before they turn 65 are automatically enrolled in traditional Medicare, and they can choose to enroll in an MA plan as an alternative.
"Another bad idea straight from Project 2025," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to Klomp's comments on the proposed default enrollment change. "Medicare Advantage is private, for-profit insurance that overcharges American taxpayers by billions every year and regularly denies seniors the care they need."
"Making Medicare Advantage the default option hurts patients and taxpayers," Pocan added, "but it will make insurance execs a lot of money."
"With Mehmet Oz running the agency, they can move incredibly quickly to make that happen, and they are."
Klomp said no plans have been finalized, but defenders of traditional Medicare warned that CMS—headed by Mehmet Oz, who during his 2022 US Senate run backed a plan entitled "Medicare Advantage for All"—could try to swiftly ram the change through without public input.
"With Mehmet Oz running the agency, they can move incredibly quickly to make that happen, and they are," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams on Friday. "They will not explain it to the people, because the people hate the idea. Instead, they say 'change the default option' and other policy jargon to try and hide the fact of what they are doing, privatizing Medicare."
"They want to remove the guarantee of Medicare," warned Lawson, "and replace it with the same private insurance giants that make billions denying healthcare, especially to those who need it the most."
Experts say making Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for seniors would likely decrease traditional Medicare enrollment dramatically.
Given massive overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans—potentially $1.2 trillion over the next decade, according to one independent estimate—a large increase in MA enrollment would be sure to drive up costs and monthly premiums across the board. A report released last month by the congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated that MA overpayments led to premium hikes of $212 per Medicare Part B enrollee last year.
"Since 2016, MA overpayments have added an estimated $82 billion to Part B premiums," the congressional report found. "[Traditional Medicare] beneficiaries, who are not enrolled in MA, bore roughly $6 billion of that burden."
Under one scheme floated last year by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), eligible Medicare recipients would be automatically enrolled in the "MA plan with the lowest premium available," unless they actively decide to opt out. Once enrolled in an MA plan, individuals would be unable to switch plans for three years.
Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who now champions Medicare for All, warned Friday that under Schweikert's plan, "seniors would be locked in a plan that the government chose for them, that has a limited network of doctors and hospitals, that makes them pay the entire bill for services they might receive outside of that network, and that denies coverage for medically necessary care far more than traditional Medicare—for three years."
In addition to weighing the default enrollment change, the Trump administration has recently delivered smaller-scale but significant victories to MA insurers, including by boosting federal payment rates—bowing to a massive industry lobbying blitz—and easing rules around the marketing of MA plans.
David Lipschutz, co-director of law and policy at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said Thursday that the latter move represents "a rollback of consumer protections, which gives in to pressures from the insurance industry and those who sell their products."
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘Disgusting’: Trump’s Top Economic Adviser Brags About Killing 300,000 Americans' ‘High-Paying’ Jobs
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," one public employee union official told Common Dreams. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."
Apr 10, 2026
President Donald Trump's top economic adviser boasted on Fox Business Thursday that the government had slashed more than 300,000 "high-paying" jobs from the federal payroll during the president's first year back in office.
Asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo about the administration's efforts to cut government spending, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said it had made "a huge amount of progress."
"I think the biggest thing that we can point to is that we've cut government employment by 300,000 workers," he said. "Those are jobs that are very high-paying that are gone forever."
He claimed the cuts reduced government spending by "an unthinkable amount of money," perhaps $1 trillion over the next ten years.
He also said that the administration "reduced the deficit last year by $600 billion" through a combination of higher-than-expected economic growth, tariff revenues, and "supply side effects" of Trump's massive tax cut, which mostly benefited the wealthiest Americans while gutting the social safety net.
Dean Baker, a longtime collaborator of Hassett’s despite their opposing political beliefs, wrote on social media that Trump’s economic adviser was dramatically exaggerating the deficit reduction that occurred during the administration's first year.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the deficit was about $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2025, just $41 billion less than the previous year and $56 billion lower than the $1.9 trillion deficit CBO projected in its most recent baseline.
"In the real world, the deficit fell... less than one-tenth of what Kevin claims," Baker said.
Trump has touted the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government employees from their "boring federal jobs" as one of his crowning achievements.
Among the agencies hit by mass layoffs were the Department of Veterans Affairs, where more than 12,700 employees got the axe; the Department of Health and Human Services, which lost more than 14,400 workers; the Social Security Administration, whose staff shrank by more than 6,600; and the Environmental Protection Agency, which lost more than 4,000 employees.
Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest labor union representing federal workers, told Common Dreams that even if slashing jobs did reduce the deficit as Hassett claimed, the harm far outweighs any such benefit—not only for the fired employees, but for the millions of Americans who depend on services they provide.
"When you say 300,000 jobs, it is a nice round number, and you link it to deficit reduction, which he was lying about," Simon said. "The fact of the matter is, the disappearance of those 300,000 jobs means degraded healthcare for our veterans; slower or nonexistent service at the Social Security Administration for the elderly and disabled who rely on Social Security for their income; and the elimination of huge swaths of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that help ensure we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink."
"You have federal prisons absolutely overwhelmed by too many inmates and too few corrections officers, endangering public safety," she continued. "Consumer product safety has been eviscerated. There are also serious public health concerns involving substance abuse, childhood nutrition, and vaccinations."
She decried Hassett's comments as "ignorant" in light of his false claims about deficit reduction, but also "just demonstrably pretty cruel and disdainful" given the impact these job losses have on individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole.
"It's cruel," Simon said, "not only on the people who held those jobs—about a 100,000 of whom are military veterans—but the impact of the disappearance of those jobs also falls on children, the elderly, anybody who consumes agricultural products, breathes air, or relies on clean water."
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," she added. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘America’s Not OK’: Surveys Show US Wellbeing in Steep Decline Under Trump
"Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs—it’s no wonder they’re concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet."
Apr 10, 2026
Two recently released surveys revealed a significant drop in Americans' self-reported wellbeing as the Trump administration launches illegal and deadly military conflicts and plunges the global economy into chaos.
On Friday, the University of Michigan issued its monthly Survey of Consumers, which showed that consumer sentiment in the US hit an all-time low after dropping by 11% since March, amid President Donald Trump's war of choice in Iran.
The drop in consumer sentiment was almost universal, the survey found, as "demographic groups across age, income, and political party all posted setbacks in sentiment, as did every component of the index, reflecting the widespread nature of this month’s fall."
As for the reasons for the decline, the survey found "many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy," such as a major spike in gas prices, which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday increased by more than 20% in the month since the war began.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the latest consumer sentiment data showed Americans are even more sour on the economy now than they were in the summer of 2022, when the economy was dealing with the highest inflation it had seen in decades.
Kendall Witmer, rapid response director of the Democratic National Committee, seized on the consumer sentiment report and accused Trump of having "tanked the economy for working families."
"Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs," Witmer added. "It's no wonder they're concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet and Trump and [Vice President] JD Vance can’t be bothered to make life more affordable for them."
The record low in consumer sentiment comes just weeks after Gallup released its annual World Happiness Report, which showed that the US had fallen out of its rankings of the 20 happiest countries in the world.
The report says the decrease in US happiness largely came from "lower life evaluations among young adults," and points the finger at high social media use as a key factor in making young people miserable.
Specifically, the report finds "there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety)" from social media use, adding that "the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level."
Social media's impact on mental health has come into focus in recent weeks with juries in multiple states finding Big Tech companies liable for creating products that harm children.
In March, a New Mexico jury found social media giant Meta liable for harming children's mental health and safety, ordering the company to pay $375 million. A day later, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to each pay $3 million in civil damages to a now-20-year-old woman who alleged harm and suffering caused by their products when she was an adolescent.
Journalist Derek Thompson took stock of the Gallup survey and the University of Michigan survey, as well as last year's General Social Survey that also documented a decline in US happiness, and declared, "America is not OK."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular