Twitter executive says network too 'slow' at dealing with abuse

A Twitter executive has declared the company "inexcusably slow" at dealing with the abuse many people suffer on the messaging platform, as it tries to better balance protecting users with allowing freedom of speech.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's general counsel, said the San Francisco-based company's policies and product have not "appropriately recognised the scope and extent of harm inflicted by abusive behaviour".

"This, to put it mildly, is not good enough," she wrote in The Washington Post.

Twitter has tripled the size of its team whose job is to protect users and is responding to five times the number of user complaints, she said, as it tries to overhaul its safety policy. It has also invested in tools to improve its ability to detect, act on and limit the reach of abusive content.

The company has long been committed to a "tweets must flow" philosophy, shying away from banning users, tweets or images, and prioritising freedom of speech in a way that it says sets it apart from rivals such as Facebook.

Earlier this year, Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief executive, wrote in a note to employees that the company was losing users by not addressing "simple trolling issues", referring to internet users who consistently abuse others.

"We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," he said.

Women and minority groups have often been targets of abuse. The GamerGate scandal saw female video game players were subject to misogynistic attacks, while female politicians and campaigners in the UK have been subjected to rape and death threats.

Twitter is facing slowing user growth. The userbase increased by 1.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, which has worried Wall Street. But it has been beating expectations on revenue growth and after a tough 2014 for the stock price, shares have rise 42 per cent so far this year.

Ms Gadde stressed that Twitter remained committed to reflecting diverse opinions on the site. "If not thoughtfully applied safety tools and policies can undermine freedom and relevance on Twitter as much as abuse can," she said. "It is not our role to be any sort of arbiter of global speech."

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