Advertisement

Twitter sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls, admits CEO Dick Costolo

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has admitted that the microblogging site is awful when it comes to abuse and harassment.

Advertisement
Tech2 News Staff|Feb 06, 2015, 19:35:43 IST

Twitter will be releasing its revenue numbers soon, but before that the company has been hitting headlines for testing new features , big deals and more. Now, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has admitted that the microblogging site is awful when it comes to abuse and harassment.Costolo reportedly admits that the awful behavior of trolls is responsible for driving away users. However, he plans to change how Twitter deals with such users who are on Twitter just to violate and abuse others. The company has been struggling to slow growth of the user base.TheVerge has got its hands on an internal memo sent by Costolo. The memo was sent to Twitter employees after  This American Life carried a piece wherein Lindy West detailed the abuse she got on the platform.He writes in the memo:We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. 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.

Advertisement

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.

Taking completely responsibility at failing to curb such users, he also added, "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."

news-analysisMore from News Analysis

He reportedly also sent a follow-up note that read, "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."

Advertisement

This also means, protecting its users would be one of the big discussions as Twitter talks about its fourth-quarter earnings tomorrow. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has been struggling to grow in terms of user base and also advertising revenue. In the most recent move, the company teamed up with Google to make its tweets more searchable online. With this move, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is trying to make tweets available for more non-users and eventually trying to generate more advertising revenue. Earlier this week, the company also revealed deals to show advertising in Flipboard mobile app and also Yahoo! Japan.

Handpicked stories, in your inbox
Global stories. Indian perspective. Zero noise.
No Spam. Unsubscribe Any Time.
First Published:Feb 06, 2015, 19:35:43 IST
Advertisement
Advertisement
Trending Stories

China's Kimi K3 challenges US AI leaders with frontier-level performance at lower cost

Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI has unveiled its latest open-weight AI model, Kimi K3, with early results suggesting it could compete with some of the world's most advanced AI systems developed by leading US companies
2 min read
Advertisement
Advertisement
Up Next