I took the unusual step of reporting a fellow Twitterer the other day.

I reported them because they were sending threatening messages of vile and violent manner to another user, who I follow, and who has had problems – I believe – with these kind of users in the past. I do not and did not follow the person who was creating the abuse but the tweets were public.

I was a bit shocked by the response from twitter.

I’m not going to go into the detail of the threats but they were full on and nasty. There was no framing it as part of a heated debate, it was an out and out threat. Twitter’s response was that they couldn’t comment on accounts that aren’t your own and to get the abused user to log a ticket. I was and am bewildered.

I didn’t ask for information on any user. I just asked them to take action. I couldn’t see any privacy issues because all I wanted to hear was: we’re investigating or – at a push – action is being taken. That’s it.

I understood twitter was a community, that it was best practice to assume a human being was at the end of each twitter handle – even when blatantly it’s often a Bot – and that you should look out for other users. I didn’t see much spirit of community from twitter in that response and I really hope they revised their manner for handling such reports. For the sake of the site – which is generally a lot of fun – and – more importantly – for the sake of its users.

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