Twitter CEO says company sucks at “dealing with abuse and trolls”
In a new memo obtained by the Verge, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo admitted that the company has failed to adequately protect users from online harassment.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Costolo said. “It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”
He accepted personal responsibility and called the company’s handling of abuse “absurd.”
I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing. We're going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them. Everybody on the leadership team knows this is vital.
Costolo eventually followed up the memo with further clarification:
We HAVE to be able to tell each other the truth, and the truth that everybody in the world knows is that we have not effectively dealt with this problem even remotely to the degree we should have by now, and that’s on me and nobody else. So now we’re going to fix it, and I’m going to take full responsibility for making sure that the people working night and day on this have the resources they need to address the issue, that there are clear lines of responsibility and accountability, and that we don’t equivocate in our decisions and choices.
Salon reports that Twitter recently made it easier to report harassment and abuse. But According to a recent Pew Research poll, women suffer “disproportionally” from “severe” online harassment—stalking, sexual harassment and death threats.
