11/02/15 NDM Story #34

Twitter CEO: We suck at dealing with trolls and abuse

Twitter’s chief executive has acknowledged that the company “sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years”, in a leaked memo.Dick Costolo’s (CEO of Twitter shown above) statement was posted on Twitter’s internal forums, in response to an employee who had highlighted an article in the Guardian by columnist Lindy West about her experience with trolls on social media.

The Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Rebecca Adlington revealed that abuse on Twitter had harmed her self-confidence in the wake of the London Olympics. “I did get upset about it,” she told the Guardian. “I couldn’t get my head around why someone would go to the effort of looking someone up, and then sending them a nasty tweet. I still can’t really. What’s going on in those people’s lives?”

this shows that new and digital media can lead to problems, conflicts as well as hurting the feelings of others due to rude and disturbing remarks. However, Twitter being in the process to better their user control means that they will have more control over what the audience have to say. Although this will mean the institutions will be more empowered than they currently are, it will ensure the safety and happiness of all.