Sarah Harte: I’d rather eat my innards than deal with inevitable abuse of Twitter

Abusers dissociate their online selves from their real-world selves and feel free to say the thing they wouldn’t say to a person’s face — researchers call it the online disinhibition effect

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns, Virgin Media news correspondent Zara King, and Labour councillor Michelle Hall all spoke out about online abuse.

CYBER misogyny or cyber violence might drive women entirely from the internet unless we tackle online abuse and harassment of women, according to Wired UK, a magazine that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, politics, and the economy. “2023 will be the year women leave the internet,” it states.

Some will sigh at another over-the-top prediction about violence against women. More cribbing. And while it’s true that men are also abused online by faceless keyboard warriors (or keyboard cowards, as I think of them), women face a particularly vicious and often highly sexualised type of abuse. Such abuse may be holding them back in their careers.