Twitter CEO Dick Costolo admitted that the social media network is not good at dealing with abuse that occurs on the site and trolls are driving core users away.
The Verge obtained a memo by Costolo in which he expressed how poorly the site handles such abuse.
"We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," he wrote. "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. It’s nobody’s fault but mine.”
The memo comes after a woman by the name of Lindy West shared her story with the Guardian.
West said that an online troll went so far as to harass her by posing as her deceased father using his name, picture and tidbits about him found in his obituary.
The troll’s biography read: “Embarrassed father of an idiot” and the location was “Dirt hole in Seattle.”
West is not the only person to deal with abuse from trolls regarding a dead parent. Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda is an example of a “core user” who actually left Twitter for a while after people began tweeting horrible things and posting grotesque images of her father.
So will anything be done? For years, Twitter had been allowing this behavior to go on pointing to a rite of “self-expression” but in November the network partnered with an advocacy group to investigate harassment towards women. And, in December, the site put some tools in place to improve its process of reporting abuse. However, many users are still harassed daily and now the CEO’s acknowledgement and loss of those users may prompt Twitter to finally do something more.
image via INFevents.com