Criado-Perez has complained about a lack of response from Twitter. She told the BBC that she had attempted "to contact Twitter's manager of journalism and news, Mark Luckie, about the rape threats she was receiving, but he did not respond and locked his tweets to become private."
Twitter's preferred solution is that the police should handle such incidents. The BBC's technology consultant Rory Cellan-Jones commented, "If it agrees to campaigners' demands for a 'report abuse' button on every tweet, it will then need to employ an army of monitors to respond to complaints and decide what constitutes abuse.
"The company would prefer that threatening tweets were referred to the police, who in the UK have been active in pursuing social media users suspected of breaking the law."
But there are many who believe that Twitter should be more proactive against the worst trolls. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said, "Of course it is right to report such abuse to the police, but social media platforms also have a responsibility for the platform they give users."
There is now a campaign to force Twitter to include simpler abuse reporting features – more specifically an abuse button. An online petition with Change.org started on Saturday has already received more than 60,000 signatures. "We need Twitter to recognize that it's current reporting system is below required standards," said its founder Kim Graham.
But not everyone agrees. "I actually think what Twitter told Criado-Perez was right. If you’re being threatened with rape and other serious crimes, you need to report it to the police – as well as taking other precautions," commented Elaine Radford in the Inquisitr. "Hitting a button to have Twitter turn off the creep’s account can’t be as effective as having Scotland Yard turn up at the stalker’s house to cart him away to jail."
She is particularly concerned that abuse buttons can also be abused. "Who hasn’t hit an alert button somewhere at sometime on the internet to report someone as abusive just because you were sick of hearing their yik yak?"
As if to prove her point, within days of receiving the complaint from Criado-Perez, Manchester Police arrested a man. "He was detained in the Manchester area on suspicion of harassment offenses," wrote the BBC this morning.