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Twitter CEO says online abuse is driving users away from Twitter

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote in an internal memo that harassment and abuse on its platform is driving users away from Twitter. Mr. Costolo took personal responsibility for Twitter's hesitance to deal with abusive users, writing, "It's nobody else's fault but mine."

It鈥檚 no secret that Twitter can be a platform where pretty nasty abuse is dished out.

Last year鈥檚 Gamergate tempest, which began, ostensibly, as a call for 鈥渆thics in video game journalism鈥� but descended into a witchhunt across social media, showed that Twitter is often slow to respond to abusive or threatening messages sent across its network.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo put it bluntly: 鈥淲e suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we鈥檝e sucked at it for years,鈥� he wrote in a company memo obtained by tech site The Verge.

Mr. Costolo noted that harassment and trolling 鈥� deliberately trying to offend someone online in order to provoke an angry response 鈥� are driving users away from Twitter.

That last point may be particularly important to Twitter. Costolo says in his memo that Twitter will begin banning troll accounts more aggressively because he feels it鈥檚 right to promote a more civil discourse on Twitter. But the company is also scheduled to deliver its fourth-quarter earnings report on Thursday, and while Twitter has doubled its revenue each quarter since going public a year ago, the number of people using the service has remained almost flat.

Costolo鈥檚 memo implies that sluggish user growth is due in large part to online harassment: 鈥淲e lose core user after core user,鈥� he wrote, 鈥渂y not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.鈥�

Costolo circulated the memo at Twitter in response to a story , and shared on This American Life, by feminist writer Lindy West. Ms. West was frequently tormented on Twitter by users who didn鈥檛 agree with her writing, and one user even created a fake profile of her father, who had recently died, and used it to make cruel comments about her. West contacted the user behind the profile, who 鈥� perhaps surprisingly 鈥� apologized for what he had done, telling West that he realized 鈥渢here is a living, breathing human being who is reading this,鈥� and that he was 鈥渁ttacking someone who never harmed [him] in any way.鈥�

West acknowledged in her article that Twitter, like other platforms, is a place where users are free to speak their minds. But she also speculated that the company could be doing more to curtail harassment, especially that stemming from racism and sexism.

Costolo apparently agrees. 鈥淲e're going to start kicking these people [trolls] off right and left,鈥� he wrote in the memo, 鈥渁nd making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.鈥� The CEO also took personal responsibility for the company鈥檚 reluctance to deal harshly with Twitter users who behave abusively toward other users. In December, Twitter improved its system for reporting abuse, but Costolo says that wasn鈥檛 enough. 鈥淚 take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淚t's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing.鈥�