On the morning of August 11th BuzzFeed released a scathing report about how Twitter has been operating as a platform that allows its users to stalk, harass, and post of private information. Over the last ten years, a number of users have been abused on the platform, regardless of the type of user. The CEO of Twitter has even acknowledged that they “suck at dealing with abuse and trolls… and we’ve sucked at it for years.”
Even with this admission, they still suck, and this is why BuzzFeed came out to expose them. Over a dozen former executives were interviewed, and from those interviews, we found out that Twitter has always been positioned to fail in the handling of harassment and abuse. Based on the fact that there is so much open abuse on Twitter’s platform, we can tell free speech has been embedded into it’s very fabric. This free speech is both good and bad, and it just so happens that BuzzFeed decided to drill into the bad side of that freedom. Twitter is a playground for trolls, and because of that, people have been pushed away.
Because of the release of the BuzzFeed article, Twitter has responded with a basic acknowledgment of the article, reporting that “we were contacted just last night for comment.” If this has been a problem for the last ten years, why hasn’t Twitter been prepare to respond to this problem?
By this point, it’s probably a good idea Twitter decides to give their safety and security team a bigger priority, just like they did for their account verification process.