There’s never a particularly good day to be the CEO of Twitter, of late, but that Donald Trump retweeted a string of videos (from the far-right, anti-Muslim Britain First group) earlier in the week, causing potential real-life political unrest and drawing contempt from even Piers Morgan, hasn’t made this week any better. And Jack Dorsey’s attempts to explain why the hate-filled videos are still up mostly just set Twitter up to get fried by its own users.
After users pointed out that the videos violated Twitter’s terms of service and reported them as abusive content in droves, Twitter replied with this:
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/936669072766332928
Not a great look, for videos posted by the deputy leader of a party so racist that its Nazi founder quit over how extreme it was getting. So Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, tried to “explain.” Unfortunately, he just made things worse.
We mistakenly pointed to the wrong reason we didn’t take action on the videos from earlier this week. We’re still looking critically at all of our current policies, and appreciate all the feedback. See our safety calendar for our plans and ship dates. https://t.co/yGytH3eskM
— jack (@jack) December 1, 2017
Needless to say, Dorsey quickly fell victim to the dreaded ratio, with both sincere inquiries and slightly less sincere replies flooding in.
https://twitter.com/joshuatopolsky/status/936683360633737216
https://twitter.com/selenalarson/status/936680468014968832
You still haven’t apologized for this lie, by the way. https://t.co/EubfwUcXRV
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) December 1, 2017
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/936680042507141121
The reality of the matter is that Twitter’s abuse team is, at this point, notoriously criticized for not doing their jobs. Nazis are more likely to be protected on the site than the people those Nazis harass and attack. In fact, it doesn’t have to be Nazis; Thorne Melcher, a trans woman who went viral for stating she didn’t feel safe in public without carrying a firearm, got suspended after she called somebody harassing her “garbage,” and Melcher is far from alone in experiencing horrific abuse on Twitter for being trans.
This, however, is egregious even for Twitter. Leaving aside the fact that the videos are an attempt by a group of bigots to incite violence, they’re doctored and depict horrific acts of violence. It should not be that hard for Twitter to see a video of somebody being horribly murdered to think that, yes, this should not be posted on their site. And yet, despite the fact those videos have been the subject of widespread outrage, Twitter still won’t take them down. It may be worth the site’s investors to ask themselves just why that is.