Twitter boss admits company ‘sucks’ at dealing with abusive trolls

The CEO of Twitter has in an internal communication admitted that his company has failed to take adequate action to tackle the abusive behaviour of some users.

We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Dick Costolo said, as reported by The Verge. 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.

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.

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.”

In December Twitter expanded upon its support functionality in an effort to make the reporting of abuse easier, but just days later EA’s Peter Moore was told that a user saying he hoped Moore’ wife and kids die was not violating Twitter rules”.

Meanwhile, the abuse of the likes of Anita Sarkessian continues. Last month the Feminist Frequency creator published many examples of the treatment she continues to receive.