How Online Platforms Can Encourage Good Behavior

The technical architecture of online platforms, on the other hand, should be designed to dampen harassing behavior, while shielding targets from harassing content. It means creating technical friction in orchestrating a sustained campaign on a platform, or engaging in sustained hounding. For example, what if, after your fifth unanswered tweet within the hour to someone who didn’t follow you, a pop-up asked if you really wanted to send that message?

It also means building user interfaces that impart a feeling of safety to targets. Code is never neutral, and interfaces can signal all kinds of things to users. For example, what if Caroline Criado Perez had been able to hit a “panic button,” one that prompted her with a message that Twitter Trust & Safety was looking into the issue and, until then, messages from strangers would be hidden from her?