Technology
Twitter's chief executive Dick Costolo has admitted that the company "sucks" when it comes to dealing with abuse and trolling on the service, reports the BBC.
In a memo to staff, leaked to tech news website the Verge, he said that bullying behaviour on the network was driving users away. He promised tougher action to deal with abusers. A series of high-profile users have quit Twitter in recent months, citing online abuse.
In his memo, Costolo wrote: "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret that 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."
His words echo a December blog post in which the company admitted that it "was nowhere near being done making changes in this area". It promises that, in coming months, it will bring in further user controls and improvements in the way users can report abusive accounts.
The Verge report also stated that amid widespread criticism, Twitter released some tools to improve its notoriously arduous process for reporting abuse in December. In November, Twitter partnered with an advocacy group to investigate harassment against women.
But every day, Twitter users still face threats of physical violence, sexual abuse, and stalking — all forms of harassment that disproportionately affect women online, according to data from The Pew Center.
