As social media sites look for ways to grapple with the growing trolling and virtual bullying, Twitter's Dick Costolo has accepted that the company sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls.
On Wednesday, Feb. 4, according to a report from The Verge - which obtained internal memos of comments made by Costolo to his employees - the Twitter CEO has acknowledged the mishandling of such problems.
"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," said Costolo per the internal memo obtained by the publication.
The memos are copies of posts that are taken from the company's private forum. The conversation thread pertains to the questions surrounding complaints against Twitter that were made by Lindy West, who was recently featured on "This American Life" - a radio series. The author spoke about discovering and then confronting her nastiest Twitter troll on the series. She also narrated her ordeal to the Guardian.
West' tormentors had gone to the extreme of creating an account in her deceased father's name to post unparliamentary comments on her.
In the internal forum, a Twitter employee posed the question what could be done to address and ease the author's predicament. To which Costolo responded that Twitter "sucked" at dealing with such issues.
The CEO is also of the belief that due to Twitter's inability to address "simple trolling issues" that people face virtually every day, people are shying away from the microblogging site. Costolo also took responsibility for dealing poorly the scenario, revealing that there were no excuses for the way things were.
"I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing," acknowledged Costolo.
Per studies, women are targeted more frequently than men on Twitter. In December, Twitter introduced new tools to aid its users in battling harassment, as well as reporting abusive behavior.
To further strengthen its stance against trolling and virtual bullies, Costolo says in the memo that Twitter will begin to kick off such individuals aggressively and will ensure that when these people wage their "ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them."
