Twitter CEO Admits “We Suck At Dealing With Abuse & Trolls”

Internal memo shows that Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, takes full responsibility for problem and takes the onus to fix the issue.

Chat with MarTechBot

twitter-logo-small-1920

An issue that Twitter has battled for years now is user retention. One issue that causes users to give up on the service is the abuse that occurs on the platform. The Verge obtained an internal memo from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo that states:

[pullquote]“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. “[/pullquote]

The internal communication came on the heels of abuse directed towards Lindy West that included the creation of a fake account as her dead father. Twitter’s harassment policy has been lengthy, cumbersome and rather ineffective to date. Over the past few months this has been highlighted due to some flagrant examples of abuse geared specifically towards women.

The tone in Mr. Costolo’s message was heated –with the anger directed at himself. He stated that what was happening was absurd and that he takes “full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front.” A follow up note made the message crystal:

[blockquote cite=”Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO”]Let me be very very clear about my response here. I take PERSONAL responsibility for our failure to deal with this as a company. I thought i did that in my note, so let me reiterate what I said, which is that I take personal responsibility for this. I specifically said “It’s nobody’s fault but mine.”[/blockquote]

Twitter stock has seen a nice jump over the past 5 days leading up to the earnings call today. Expect to hear a few questions on this front (and for some new tools to help combat trolls in the near future.) For more information see The Verge.


Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.


About the author

Greg Finn
Contributor
Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.

Fuel up with free marketing insights.