On Wednesday, a report from The Verge alleged that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had made frank, internal comments to his company’s staffers about the social network’s mishandling of abuse and harassment. The report contained apparent copies of posts taken from Twitter’s private company forum, and the conversation in question revolved around complaints about Twitter made by author Lindy West, who’d recently been featured on radio series This American Life to talk about finding and confronting her worst Twitter troll.
Costolo’s Monday response, as posted in the report, did not mince words: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years.” He went on to claim that the company was losing “core user after core user” because of trolls, then stated—and reiterated—his taking “full responsibility” for the problem.
“Everybody in the world knows that we have not effectively dealt with this problem even remotely to the degree we should have by now,” Costolo wrote in a second post. His assertion that “we’re going to fix it” didn’t contain specific strategies or suggestions but rather an assurance that teams assigned to the task of abuse moderation would be given resources and “clear lines of responsibility and accountability.” In the meantime, users who currently receive a deluge of unwanted, anonymous Twitter replies tied specifically to the GamerGate hashtag have turned to the Good Game Auto-Blocker, which aggregates known, aggressive users and phrases for anyone seeking to reduce noise they may receive on the social network.
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