Following the appalling and unrelenting racial abuse of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones on Twitter – which resulted in the notorious conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos copping a permanent ban – CEO Jack Dorsey has said the company needs to do much, much better about abuse on its platform.
“No one deserves to be the target of abuse on Twitter,” he said on a conference call with investors on Tuesday, as reported in Variety. “We haven’t been good enough at ensuring that’s the case, and we need to do better.”
“We are not, and never will be, a platform that shows people only part of what’s happening. [However], abuse is not civil discourse.”
Although Twitter is much looser with censorship than that other social media giant, Facebook (e.g. nudity is allowed), it’s long copped criticism for it’s total ineffectiveness in dealing with abuse from trolls. (Then again, so has Facebook.)
To say navigating the tricky line between not censoring free speech and policing abuse is tricky is an understatement; Dorsey even got into a Twitter beef with WikiLeaks about it.
Cyber feudalism: @Twitter founder @Jack banned conservative gay libertarian @nero for speaking the ‘wrong’ way to actress @Lesdoggg
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 21, 2016
@wikileaks we don’t ban people for expressing their thoughts. Targeted abuse & inciting abuse against people however, that’s not allowed
— Jack (@jack) July 21, 2016
@jack It is time @Twitter got out of the censorship/justice game. Let users create communal filter lists if need be.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 21, 2016
@wikileaks all fair points. We are working to get here
— Jack (@jack) July 21, 2016
Leslie Jones, btw, is back on Twitter. 
Source: Variety.
Photo: Getty / Alberto E. Rodriguez.
