As many of you know, Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones was the target of racist, hateful trolls on Twitter. Leslie retweeted some of the abuse, which compared her to animals, insulted her appearance and worse. Sadly, celebrities on Twitter, particularly women, are all too aware of the abusive comments which are permitted on that platform. Trolls and racists have had a home on Twitter for years and little to nothing has been done about it. The good news is that Leslie shed a light on some of Twitter’s roaches and they’re finally addressing the problem. In an interview with Seth Myers on Late Night, Leslie revealed that she had personally met with the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, who had worked with her to ban some of the worst accounts. Dorsey had a conference call with investors yesterday, where he discussed Twitter’s efforts to finally crack down on trolling and abuse. Variety has the details of his talk:
Twitter chief Jack Dorsey acknowledged that the company’s efforts in cracking down on hateful and abusive attacks on the social service haven’t gone far enough.
“No one deserves to be the target of abuse on Twitter,” he said on a conference call with investors Tuesday. “We haven’t been good enough at ensuring that’s the case, and we need to do better.”
At the same time, Dorsey insisted that Twitter is not censoring speech: “We are not, and never will be, a platform that shows people only part of what’s happening.” However, he said, “Abuse is not civil discourse.”
According to Dorsey, at the start of the year Twitter identified safety as its No. 1 priority, and “recent events have only confirmed” the importance of that focus.
Among one of the highest-profile incidents recently, actress Leslie Jones was the target of numerous racist comments on Twitter, prompting the “Saturday Night Live” cast member and “Ghostbusters” co-star to announce she was leaving the service. Dorsey personally intervened and met with Jones, and Twitter subsequently banned conservative columnist Milo Yiannopoulos and other accounts over the attacks; Jones has since resumed tweeting.
In announcing its second-quarter 2016 results, Twitter cited several steps it has taken recently to improve safety on the service. The company says it has improved the ability to block other users, and launched a comment-moderation system on Periscope that allows viewers on a broadcast to report and vote in real-time on comments that they consider to be spam or abuse…
“We, along with the broader industry, have a lot more work to do in this area, but we’re committed to continuing to develop tools that will help keep Twitter, Periscope and Vine safe and open for people to connect in real time,” Twitter said in a statement. “We do this work together with the strong communities and partners that exist across all of our products.”
Investors were disappointed with Twitter’s Q2 results and weak outlook for the third quarter, pushing shares down more than 11% in after-hours trading.
I question why it took Twitter THIS LONG to finally try to institute an effective system against abuse. That should have been part of their business plan from the start and, barring that, they should have put the smack down on trolls as soon as they noticed it was a problem. Twitter has been around for ten years. It took this coming to a head with a public relations disaster, along with a drop in valuation, for them to finally admit it was an issue.
That said, Dorsey did say most of the right things. He admitted that they haven’t done enough so far and said that they’re putting measures into place to stop it. He didn’t have to give any credence to the “free speech” argument though. Twitter is a private platform and they don’t have to cater to the most abusive people citing first amendment rights. It’s reassuring that they’re not going to censor different viewpoints, but that argument from trolls was invalid in the first place.
I just checked Leslie Jones’s twitter and while it’s heartening that she’s back online and staying positive, she’s still receiving some terrible responses to her tweets, including #FreeMilo posts which refer to the Breitbart journalist who was banned for trolling her. Facebook lets you delete and ban people spamming and trolling your page. Twitter should have a similar tool for everyone.
photos credit: WENN and Getty
About time!!! This woman is an inspiration!!!
I’m so sorry that she had to endure that kind of horrible abuse, and I applaud her for speaking out about it. I still think social media has been a more negative than positive influence in our society, all things considered. It’s a platform for narcissistic bragging and vicious trolling. Our country has neve been so polarized, and while I don’t think social media is responsible for that, I also don’t think it’s helping. I hope it fades into the background.
ugh, I completely agree that social media has done more harm than good. and it just seems to be getting worse. but unfortunately don’t think social media is going anywhere. it has become ingrained in our society and at this point there’s no going back.
Social media IS our society. It is merely a reflection of us. WE as a society need to change in order to really change social media. If people weren’t hateful toward each other then there would be none of that on social media.
I’m inclined to agree as well.
–TheRealPinky
I agree with @GoodNames as well. Social media has only shown the worst in people. I had to delete my FB after getting death threats because of Brexit and secure my Twitter account. I mean, seriously, the whole thing is out of hand now. I hope it loses its allure for adults and it is only left for teenagers’ fun.
I have to disagree, for a lot of minority groups we didn’t get a voice and power UNTIL we got social media. Leslie Jones will deal with some form of racism every day of her life, but do you know what she can do now? Publicize it. Use her own voice, not go to any form of media or brand and pray they don’t twist it or use it as an “All Lives Matter” narrative but SHE can talk.
We truly did not have that Goodnames.
We did not have the comraderie and ability to make our voices heard and effect change by SHOWING we are a group of people that deserve respect and so much of the colorism and racism that casually ruled out world has been halted because of the backlash from millions of United blacks and their allies saying, “No, this is wrong. This is an open display of racism”
Chris Rock a black millionaire used social media to document the number of times he was pulled over. This is a man with more money than time and even he can’t control the simple fact that from a distance he’s just a black man in a car that’s too good for him in a racist’s eye. So what did Chris do? Start using social media EVERY SINGLE TIME he was pulled over. Including when he was taping Comedians in Cars with Jerry Springer, he took control of something that was out of control and harming his life and took power by using social media. Something all of his money couldn’t do for him.
Black Lives Matter, #BringBackOurGirls, #OscarsSoWhite – please think from our perspective about how many of those things would have remained stagnated without social media. For us it’s been a god send for social change.
^^^ everything you said! Ive actually said this before,.. before social media Many of us didnt have a voice or a link or proof, or access to resources, or a lifeline, or a guidance , what Leslie experienced was horrific but her exposing it lovingly and swiftly also disabused the Colorblind Transcendence Squad that these are things of the pass or that she is too rich to experience that debasing Sh*t still in 2016
@ESE yes. Yes. YES!!!! Thank you.
There was an interesting speaker at the philosophy festival in my town. He believes the world is spiralling out of control and social media, smartphones and the acceleration they cause play a role.
He also called it a myth that social media are important platforms for information and discussion because everybody only looked for and believed the things they believe anyway.
I disagree.
Social media has been a great tool to spread the truth.
BLM and other groups have benefited.
IA. Social media is an amazing tool. It can be used to give voices to people who otherwise would not have had one because of the media’s insistence to only cover topics they think will make them the most money. While it is also has caused some damage, it has also done a lot of good. It keeps families in touch with each other, allows social movements to take form etc. pulls the rug off of racism, sexism and allows the free flow of ideas (whether they are good or bad is up to you).
There should be checks and balances, but overall, social media can be used to make our society better. We just have to put in the effort to make sure that it is used in the proper way.
I’m inclined to agree as well.
–TheRealPinky
Agreed! It wasn’t until videos of police murder and brutality were being heavily distributed that public perception of BLM took a positive turn and gained supporters who’d been plugging their ears before.
SO many groups have benefited.
#OscarsSoWhite finally forced an old outdated Academy to admit they weren’t respectjng or acnowledging minority talent and as a result we are finally seeing more diversity.
It all depends on how it is used.
Even the vitriol and ugly racist posts show that racism, sexism, and homophobia ARE real.
Hmmm. It’s a tricky situation. Obviously no-one should be subjected to harassment, but from the point of view of the social media companies, there is no solution that is simultaneously easy AND low-cost AND effective.
Every solution has a gaping flaw, making it pointless. You can’t ban ip addresses because they are often shared and even if they weren’t, an abuser can just make a new account. You can’t moderate 500 million messages a day without spending billions on wages and sending the company bankrupt. Giving the abused person the ability to ignore the offensive poster is already current practice and it’s the “best” solution of a bad bunch – the gaping flaw is that while it’s fair to ask the innocent party to ignore one or two abusive accounts, it’s completely impractical when it’s a mass onslaught.
So I’m totally side-eyeing the CEO’s pledge. What new solution does he have? I suspect he’s just mouthing platitudes. Acknowledging that there is a problem IS a small step up, but isn’t actually going to fix the problem.
It is not impossible. There are technical solutions, such as filters. Twitter could allow users to autofilter comments with certain words – chosen by the user. So I could filter out hate words, profanity, or even something I just don’t want to hear about – like, say, “kardashian” or whatever, and then the comment would never appear.
You could select “automatically filter and block” for certain words, or just “filter” for others. This would be easy (and therefor inexpensive) to program. Don’t give up so easily. That was probably their rationale from the beginning, along with some “free speech” thing that white dudes would not imagine being misused, because hate speech is rarely directed towards them.
Your idea of allowing users to define their own filter words is definitely a good one, but there are still numerous problems with filters.
They’re just too easy to work around. They do nothing for more “creative” abuse. I’ve seen some graphic-detail threats that would pass any word-filter but are absolutely horrifying.
Part of the problem is that so much depends on context. “I know where you live” is a clear threat if it’s from a stranger, but has a completely different meaning if the context is an acquaintance offering you a lift to the party. Something like “you’re going to end up like your mother” could be a compliment (if mum is admirable) a snide remark (if mum has some annoying/undesirable trait) or a threat (if something horrible happened).
It’s also not preemptively protective in situations where an innocent word becomes abusive. Take Taylor Swift and the snakes for example. There’s no way she could have known to filter snake emojis until after she’d been harassed with them. There’s definitely some benefit in being able to put a stop to it after 50 snakes, rather than having to deal with 5,000, but at least some level of harassment/abuse has to have occurred before you’d react and put a filter on it.
Seems like they’re only addressing it because it was affecting profits.
Exactly. The french government had asked them to comply with the anti hate speech laws if France and they basically showed them the middle finger. They care about bad pr, not about racism or sexism or homophobia on their platform.
Doesn’t shock me in the least.
Racists and monsters make them money, they’re not so quick to ban them.
Twitter could do a lot more. I’m glad that Leslie is getting the results she needs, but it should not have taken this to get Twitter to care.
I also will not take them seriously until they actually take concrete steps towards making the platform safer. The biggest thing they can do would be to cooperate with law enforcement when it comes to matters of harassment. Right now, it is like pulling teeth to try to get them to turn over any information about a user, even when there is clear evidence of threats or illegal behavior. If they are serious about stamping out harassment, make it clear that you fully cooperate when it comes to pressing charges against people who use your platform for illegal acts.
Twitter has always been selective, when the nude scandals were going on, they blocked the accounts of people who retweeted Jennifer Lawrence’s pictures, but the accounts of those who retweeted other celebs pictures, were still up.
For all the Freeze Peach morons — for all that you are about protecting speech, it’s worth thinking about how much someone can say when they are being relentlessly harassed and abused. There’s more than one way to censor.
And another thing — don’t come at us minorities with the nonsense that we have to be POLITE and RESPECTFUL and EMOTIONLESS when we explain things to you, when you are fighting for the right to be an obnoxious bigot. Respectability politics goes both ways.
THANK YOU!
ps lol @ freeze peach
Twitter doesn’t do anything! Even for non celebrities. I’ve been harassed and stalked and Twitter even though I’ve handed them evidence of whom was responsible they ignored me. I actually had someone call my building management office trying to get me kicked out. I have been called names, my kids pics used to mock me, and Twitter goes “eh, they aren’t violating rules”. I would love to sue Twitter but sadly that won’t go anywhere unless you have a class action lawsuit. It would be nice to see them take responsibility for certain situations.
I’m so sorry to hear that! Yeah unfortunately the company is a piece of sh*t in that regard.
Thanks! It’s a cesspool of crazy on there sometimes!
A lot of a celebrity’s power – and some non-celeb jobs as well- are fueled by social media presence and followers. This is more than vanity for many many people – this needs to be handled better for all users.
Do they want a cookie for finally doing the right thing?
Leslie’s abuse alone had been going on for a year+ not to talk of all the other incidents that DID make the news in some fashion and Twitter did nothing.
Screw em.
I love love love the coverage today!