Britain was putting pressure on Twitter, a social media site, to make reporting abuse easier for Internet users. This was after a petition for a case from more than 300,000 people. The case concerned a feminist campaigner who stated she was threatened with rape repeatedly.

This feminist campaigner was Caroline Criado-Perez. She helped lobby the Bank of England to have Jane Austen, a 19th century novelist, become the new face of Britain's 10 pound note. This action was an effort to neutralize criticisms of women being under-represented on the country's currency.

This led to Caroline being "targeted repeatedly with rape threats," according to an online petition. The petition also wanted Twitter add a "report abuse" button to its service immediately.

Twitter was a social networking and microblogging site founded in 2006. In an effort to limit its private-share sales, the company bought back its shares from employees and investors using half of the US$s 800 million investment from DST Global. Twitter was valued at around US$9 billion, according to a three sources knowledgeable about the matter as reported by Bloomberg.