VANITY FAIR
by Caleb Garling
October 9, 2014
Twitter C.E.O. Dick Costolo and his staff have received death threats from ISIS, Costolo said on stage at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit. After shutting down some of the group’s Twitter accounts, Twitter management dealt with calls for their “assassination.”
“That’s a jarring thing for anyone to deal with,” Costolo said while in conversation with the Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson. The threats highlight the tricky role Twitter plays in facilitating dialogue online. The company often takes fire for giving a voice to sexual harassers, terrorists, and other evil-doers. Tension continues between those who believe all speech should be allowed and those who believe that Twitter should block some material—such as ISIS video showing the beheading of journalists.
“We take a lot of heat on both sides of the debate,” Costolo acknowledged. “Whenever you have a global public information channel, you’re going to use it for good, and some people are going to use it for nefarious purposes,” he said. He noted that ISIS operates outside of the speech that’s protected by Twitter’s terms of use. When the company is alerted, he claimed, it shuts those accounts down “effortlessly.”…..
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