Twitter CEO Dick Costolo didn’t pull any punches when he assessed his company’s ability to respond to trolls, hackers and other social media abusers, saying simply: “We suck” at this.
He admitted to company employees on an internal memo that the company’s failures were driving away customers, The Verge reported.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Mr. Costolo wrote in the memo, the news site reported. “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.”
His comments came in reply to a question on the company’s internal forum about a story by Lindy West, a frequent target of Twitter harassers, The Verge reported.
Mr. Costolo went on, in his memo: “I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this [trolling] 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.”
And he then made this promise, The Verge reported: “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.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.