How prevalent is online abuse?

[bemildred]

Rape threats made to feminist campaigner and freelance journalist Caroline Criado-Perez on Twitter have sparked a heated debate about the criminality of online abuse and a company's responsibility to tackle it.

The threats, which came after Criado-Perez ran a successful campaign to get a woman on a bank note, are the latest in a long line of online abuse cases to gain widespread attention.

The subsequent debate has focused on how much Twitter and other companies should do to tackle abuse of their users by other users.
There are three main camps, loosely 'do regulate', 'don't regulate' and 'can't regulate'. Some of the arguments are ideological, but others centre on whether it's feasible or not to regulate or moderate billions of messages.

While anecdotal evidence of horrific threats abound, there's little data on how common occurrences of abuse are and how widespread the problem is. We've tried to look at what's available to help inform the debate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check/2013/jul/29/online-abuse-twitter-social-media

[Just Saying]

1. In a word-VERY

I don't really talk politics on twitter but I made what I considered a harmless comment after Newtown that we needed to do a better job at controlling who get their hands on guns and I got attacked by people that didn't even follow me. "Feminazi" was the mildest but I and my family were also threatened. I reported all attacks to Twitter.

It's just too easy for people who think they're anonymous to say just about anything. It's not okay and I'm glad that it looks like authorites are taking this seriously.

[PoliticAverse]

2. 'Very' is my answer also. n/t