Harassment has been a big issue in the gaming community recently, and nowhere is it more rampant than on Twitter. Many of the big events of #GamerGate last year happened on Twitter, and numerous figures in the gaming community were the victims of death threats, doxing, and other harassment over the platform. The fact that this was able to happen was, in short, a problem, and Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo agrees.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Costolo said. “It’s no secret and 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.”
“I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It’s nobody’s fault but mine, and it’s embarrassing.”
These comments come in response to a story shared by Lindy West, a frequent target of harassment on Twitter. She shared her experiences on NPR’s This American Life and in The Guardian newspaper. Figures in gaming like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian have also been the constant targets of Twitter harassment. The discussion about whether or not something could be done was opened by employee Adrian Cole on Twitter’s forums, and Mr. Costolo again responded.
“Let me be very very clear about my response here. I take PERSONAL responsibility for our failure to deal with this as a company. I thought i did that in my note, so let me reiterate what I said, which is that I take personal responsibility for this. I specifically said ‘It’s nobody’s fault but mine.’
“We HAVE to be able to tell each other the truth, and the truth that everybody in the world knows is that we have not effectively dealt with this problem even remotely to the degree we should have by now, and that’s on me and nobody else. So now we’re going to fix it, and I’m going to take full responsibility for making sure that the people working night and day on this have the resources they need to address the issue, that there are clear lines of responsibility and accountability, and that we don’t equivocate in our decisions and choices.”
Source: The Verge