The recent increase in the severity of cyber crime and abuse and trolling on social media networks have caused major problems for major companies, including Sony Pictures and Twitter.

After years of online harassment, along with Twitter’s inability to fix the problem, major Twitter users have begun to leave and delete their accounts. Many victims were abused and taunted about either dead family members or about their political/social views.

Sara Payne was harassed over her murdered daughter and Zelda Rae Williams over her father, Robin Williams, who had committed suicide. Feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez was abused on Twitter by Isabella Sorley, who is now jailed.

According to BBC News, Twitter’s trolling problems have caused its net worth to decrease by $125 million in the 2014 fourth quarter. Its increase in the amount of monthly active users also slowed. The increase in the amount of United States users have come to a stop altogether. As shown in the chart, the amount of Twitter users in America have stayed at 63 million over the past two quarters.

After admitting that Twitter “suck[s] at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo has promised to try to make a change, starting with making a deal with Google.

Sony Pictures’ former co-chair Amy Pascal decided to resign from her position as chief and start her own production company after the recent cyber attack by Guardians of Peace (GOP), which revealed her private work emails.

GOP was found to be based in North Korea and U.S. authorities think that this attack was mainly due to the fake killing of Kim Jong-Un in Sony’s new production, “The Interview”. In addition to gaining access to Pascal’s emails, they were also able to steal other internal information such as unreleased films and other emails.

This incident caused Sony Pictures to delay the showing of “The Interview”, although was still able to make $15 million off of downloads within the first three days of its release.

Photo from www.businessinsider.com

Twitter’s average amount of monthly active users is becoming stagnant in the United States and seems to be hitting a peak on the international level too.