Twitter can’t seem to please anyone, these days.
After suspending the accounts of several prominent members of the “alt-right,” the social giant mistakenly ran an ad sponsored by a white
supremacist group this week.
Admitting that the ad violated Twitter’s own policies, CEO Jack Dorsey took the blame for the blunder on Thursday.
Despite efforts to curb their activity, hatemongers and other types of trolls have scared away some of Twitter’s most influential users.
Earlier this
summer, New York Times editor Jon Weisman gave up on the network, given its failure to stem the tide of anti-Semitism being tweeted in his direction.
More recently, Twitter permanently
suspended the account of conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos -- but not before he directed a number of racist and demeaning tweets in the direction of “Saturday Night Live” star
Leslie Jones.
Internally, Twitter has long struggling to solve its troll problem. Last year -- echoing earlier comments by
then-CEO Dick Costolo -- Vijaya Gadde, general counsel for Twitter, wrote in The Washington Post: “Even when we have recognized that harassment is taking place, our response times have
been inexcusably slow and the substance of our responses too meager.”
In response, Twitter gave its “mute” button greater powers earlier this week. Per the change, users
should soon be able to mute keywords, phrases, and even entire conversations they don’t want to see in their notifications.
Officially, Twitter says that the rise of hate speech goes
beyond its platform.
In a statement, the company asserted: “The amount of abuse, bullying, and harassment we’ve seen across the Internet has risen sharply over
the past few years.”