Ms Sinéad McSweeney:

One would have to open another account.

The point the Senator made about the public nature of the platform is very important. We are very clear that it is a public platform; that is its main attraction. We signal that very clearly, and it is repeated again in the safety tips for teens and the safety tips for parents. It is to encourage people to be cognisant of the fact that it is a public platform, to think twice about what they share on the platform and to give more consideration to the way in which they use it. The points the Senator made about context are also important. Again, we work to raise awareness of this to ensure that people use the tools that are available, such as block and ignore, and understand that one can make the situation more uncomfortable or worse if one continues to engage.

I spoke about anonymity earlier. I understand the serious concerns people are raising about anonymity, but for us there is a fundamental value in anonymity that is very important to Twitter as a platform. We have gone over much of that ground.

There were two questions about children and how young the users are. In its earliest incarnation Twitter was seen as a news and information service. Historically, there have been far fewer children on the Twitter platform than on others. Our terms of service provide that users must be over 13 years old. If we find that users are not over 13 years old, those accounts are closed by us.