After repeatedly suspending the Twitter accounts of groups associated with ISIS, CEO Dick Costolo revealed that he and his employees had been threatened by the brutal jihadist faction that has carried out and publicized beheadings of journalists and care workers.
Costolo revealed the death threats during an interview with author and Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson during a conversation at Vanity Fair s New Establishment Summit.
According to a post on Vanity Fair s website Friday, Costolo said the threats for the assassination of both management and staff at the San Francisco-based company were shocking, saying, that s a jarring thing for anyone to deal with.
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.
In a video of the interview posted on the website, Costolo seemed genuinely unsettled by the ISIS threats.
The blog post goes on in some detail to address Twitter s recent efforts to be more transparent and inform the public about the personal user data the U.S. government has demanded Twitter turn over:
On Wednesday, Twitter filed a First Amendment suit against the government, demanding the ability to speak more specifically about these requests. Costolo said the company doesn t want to publish the specifics of requests—which could hinder law enforcement—but does want to offer more detail on the numbers and types of requests overall.
We should be able to tell our users, Costolo said.
Credit: Vanity Fair
