Twitter chief addresses allegations of ‘toxicity’
Some who use the site for work say they are being pushed out by aggressive bullies and trolls
Has Twitter become too toxic?
Once again, the answer is yes, at least for a couple of high-profile users of the medium: a White House reporter for the New York Times, and an auto columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
For better or worse, Twitter has helped start revolutions and elect a president. But its immediacy, brevity, plus the anonymity it makes possible, have turned it into a living hell for some users.
New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Maggie Haberman wrote a column over the weekend about her decision to pull back from Twitter, saying, “The viciousness, toxic partisan anger, intellectual dishonesty, motive-questioning and sexism are at all-time highs, with no end in sight.”
And the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Neil, another Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter who wrote a review of Tesla’s Model 3 over the weekend, appears to have deleted his Twitter account after all the tweeted feedback accusing him of being too cozy with Tesla.
People come and go on Twitter — and some people more famous than Haberman and Neil have been trolled off the platform, such as actress Leslie Jones — but for reporters who use the medium as a tool for their work, it’s unusual.
And Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is paying attention. He publicly addressed parts of Haberman’s piece on why she has decided to pull back
on Twitter.
“Fundamentally, we need to focus more on the conversational dynamics within Twitter,” Dorsey tweeted Saturday. “We haven't paid enough consistent attention here. Better organization, more context, helping to identify credibility, ease of use.”
In response to Haberman's point that Twitter has given everyone a voice in the public discourse, but that the “downside is is that everyone is treated as equally expert on various topics,” Dorsey said Twitter can help.
“Helping to determine credible voices per topic in real-time is extremely challenging, but believe it's possible,” he said. “Mix of algos and network.”
That response provoked cries that Twitter might be considering censorship.
But social media platforms are increasingly dealing with having to make judgments about credibility: Twitter is purging tens of millions of fake accounts. And Facebook is determining what constitutes fake news.