Twitter has been losing precious users to the abuse of trolls for years, and now CEO Dick Costolo says he's not going to take it anymore.
In a candid memo to Twitter employees, obtained by The Verge, the company's head honcho admitted that Twitter has "sucked" at dealing with harassment by trolls on the platform for years. Costolo took full responsibility for that fact and vowed to begin "kicking these people off right and left."
"I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO," he wrote. "It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing."
The apology was a direct response to another employee's post on an internal Twitter forum. The post cited a recent story in The Guardian, by writer Lindy West, who has been repeatedly and brutally harassed on Twitter. One troll went so far as to create an account for her recently deceased father, which he used to torment West.
The Twitter employee excerpted a piece from West's article in The Guardian, which read: "I’m aware that Twitter is well within its rights to let its platform be used as a vehicle for sexist and racist harassment. But, as a private company – just like a comedian mulling over a rape joke, or a troll looking for a target for his anger – it could choose not to. As a collective of human beings, it could choose to be better."
That is what Costolo is now vowing to do. In some ways, this process has already begun. Earlier this year, Twitter began banning users who were sharing a video of journalist James Foley being beheaded by Islamic State militants. And, when Robin Williams' daughter Zelda Williams, publicly announced she was leaving Twitter after being harassed in the aftermath of her father's death, Twitter also promised to delete accounts that share images of the deceased upon the family's request. Most recently, Twitter launched a tool in conjunction with a group called Women, Action, & Media, which will make it easier to report instances of harassment and get them resolved.
For Twitter, taking these steps to mitigate abuse is not just a nice thing to do. It's a business imperative. Twitter needs more users. That fact is baked into every aspect of the company's strategy, including its recent rollout of Instant Timelines, which aim to make Twitter easier to understand for new users by showing them relevant Tweets as soon as they sign up.
It's also the driving force behind Twitter's newly announced deal with Google, which will make Tweets visible in Google search results. The partnership will make it easier for everyday Google users---aka. pretty much everyone---to understand what Twitter is all about. All of it is in service of attracting more people to the platform and catching up to other social networks like Facebook, which have dwarfed Twitter, in terms of monthly active users.
As Twitter is doubling down on growing its base, it also makes sense to focus on retaining the users it already has. That means walking the fine line between making people feel safe on Twitter and staying true to Twitter's history of minimal censorship.
Just how Twitter plans to do that is still unclear, but in a follow-up message to the internal forum, Costolo promised to ensure 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."
Here are Costolo's responses in full:
