Is Someone Bullying You On Twitter?

by | 30 Comments

Is someone bullying or harassing you on twitter? I was talking with someone and she mentioned about people who were rude to her on twitter and she wanted to de-activate her twitter account because she got really hurt by the remark. I told her that she shouldn’t quit twitter just because of a little bully who had too much time on his or her hands. We shouldn’t let people like this to influence us.

So what do you to with twitter bullies?

1. Ignore Them

If someone is trying to bully you by sending you hurtful tweets, one way is to ignore them and continue to tweet with other friends. You can log off twitter or do other stuff first then continue to tweet. When you ignore these people, they will not continue to send you all those tweets. If they continue, move to method 2.

2. Block Them

Just block them, they can’t do anything to you when you block them. Blocking prevents the user from following you or replying to you. Isn’t that fun? I block some people who were rude to me and others.  Usually I’ll just ignore them because I know they won’t be on twitter for long, but when it gets too annoying or too personal I’ll just block them. Funny thing is I’m not even following most of them.

3. Set Your Account To Be Protected

This helps a lot. If you want privacy you can set your account to be protected so that the public can’t view your tweets unless they follow you and you allow them to see your tweets. By protecting your twitter account, you get to choose who is able to view your tweets. Keeping bullies away.

4. Report to @twitter

Twitter takes this very seriously as well. They have a harassment and violent policy page. You can report to twitter when those bullies have gone too far.

Do check out twitter policy for more information on what to do.

Here are an example of a twitter bully, tweets are screen shots from one twitterer. Names were censored to respect the privacy.


Do you have any experience with cyber bullies? If you did, what did you do?

"Subscribe to the blog"
Your competitors have subscribed to me, have YOU? Receive an update straight to your inbox every time I publish something new. Your email address will never be shared

  • Pingback: Johnny Spence

  • Pingback: 10,000 Words

  • Pingback: AnneJocteurMonrozier

  • http://danny-fr.blogspot.com/ @Danny_Fr

    What does the veggie comment has to do with anything?

  • Pingback: Jim Wood

  • Pingback: John Hewitt

  • http://twitter.com/craigmcgill Craig McGill

    I would say it's only the 3rd one that really counts as bullying – and even then it appears to be a one-off negative comment – hardly hardcore bullying.

  • http://twitter.com/KisAndie Andrea Kis

    It happened with me before. I have unfollowed a bunch of people who were going on about their daily moanings and complaints and swearing and when they have found it out they tried to bully me. Thankfully I am not the kind of person they can pick on and sorted them out very quickly. Just blocked the whole bunch of them and erased them. They weren't people I'd be friends in real life anyway.

    The other time it happened when I have unfollowed a person who didn't like me arguing against some of his points he raised about certain topics. Please note it wasn't a fight, I was simply puting through my opinion against his. He ended up tweeting up me being a nasty person to his followers who then made really bad and vile comments about me without knowing the root cause or true situation.

    I think bullying is not always swearing, cursing bad name calling but also when someone tries to undermine, manipulate and belittle you in an online conversational environment but when they can't do it they turn to nasty tactics like trying to turn others against you or discredit you as an online identity or personality. And it is harder to deal with bullies like that then with the simple, dumb name calling ones.
    Unfortunately not everyone is such a balanced, stronf personality like I am and Twitter and other social media sites can be as cruel and vile as entertaining or nice they are at other times.

  • http://askaaronlee.com Aaron Lee

    The person who tweet the 3rd one also tweet the others and yeah its hardcore bullying. =S

  • http://askaaronlee.com Aaron Lee

    Was the Verbal comments that the person said that was bullying, all four tweets was taken from the same person.

  • http://twitter.com/Bloget *Laurie*

    I think this happens frequently to tweeple. Thank you for sharing…

  • mskarenau

    I wasn't sure if these would constitute as bullying either, but imagine all of these messages sent to YOU by the same person.

    Although pulling them out of context makes it more difficult to judge too. Either way, good for you Aaron for putting up a post like this. No one should stop tweeting because a jerk decides to be negative and disrespectful!

  • http://askaaronlee.com Aaron Lee

    It is sent by the same person, actually some of them are really hurtful to others and I didn't post them.

  • http://askaaronlee.com Aaron Lee

    Thank you Laurie =D

  • Inez

    Bullies: always trying to snare the rest of the world in their net of misery…

    Thank you for the article, Aaron.

  • http://dreamingcherries.com/ Tinu Cherian

    Reporting To @Twitter will not work. Twitter just wont take any measures, even with lots of proofs given !

    I had filed a case aganist @tbitch ( whose tweets have probably inspired you to write this post) with Twitter.
    This is what they replied :

    Twitter provides a communication service. As a policy, we do not mediate content or intervene in disputes between users. Users are allowed to post content, including potentially inflammatory content, provided that they do not violate the Twitter Terms of Service and Rules (name calling is not a violation).

    I think the best way is to “Ignore and block them “

  • Pingback: wemogo.com

  • http://dreamingcherries.com/ Tinu Cherian

    Update : As of today , Either Twitter or @tbitch herself deleted the account ! Twitter is one troll /bully less ! :)

  • Pingback: Blair Semenoff

  • Pingback: Mirijam Rosenast

  • Pingback: Jackie Bigford

  • Tldavidson93

    Thanks for your article. @xSDOx & I both had someone harassing us, so we had to block & protect our accounts, unfortunately. Some people can be so immature….sad, but true.

  • Pingback: Sail

  • Pingback: paul steele

  • Pingback: Vinoth Chandar

  • Pingback: Diana Adams

  • Pingback: Ruhani Rabin

  • Pingback: Janis La Couvée

  • Pingback: Social Side Media

  • TheyAreWolvesInSheepsClothing

    Aaron Lee I don’t know much about you or your site and just happened to come across it when browsing. I agree that there are many bullies on Twitter, but lately the bullies are the ones proclaiming they are the victims and are anti-bully. People like cjwhodunit , Bullyville, Kate Gosselin, Ziggyflo etc. You want to help end bullying? Focus on them.

Copyright © 2013 · Ask Aaron Lee