Dick Costolo is the former CEO of Twitter. He recently spoke with CNBC and stated the social media company needs to change their permissions for certain accounts. He feels this is a prime way to make improvements on the platform. High authority accounts should have more permissions to post certain tweets than average users.
Costolo agreed that many users would likely hate this new idea being implemented on Twitter or any other social media platform. In a time when online harassment and widespread disinformation is at an all-time high, Costolo feels it is necessary.
He used an example to make his point stating that users who have not verified their accounts with phone numbers or photos should not be allowed to respond to tweets. If they do, it should only be visible to their own followers.
Mr. Costolo left the company in 2015 after working as the CEO for five years. One instance he feels is of importance is when ISIS accounts tweeted images of an execution. Twitter deleted the images right away, but they shared them again using other accounts.
Recently, Twitter decided to say they are willing to start differentiating their users’ accounts. In June, a new feature will be implemented that would put a label on tweets from government officials who create posts that go against their terms and conditions. This will be used instead of simply deleting accounts.
While the company did not reference President Trump’s controversial tweets that broke the rules, the new feature was released following the tweets by the president that came under a lot of criticism and were not removed.
Most social media platforms have come under scrutiny in the past for failure to regulate posts from government officials. Critics continue to argue that these companies need to crack down on offensive and discriminatory content. Others think each social media platform should allow people to speak freely under the protection of the First Amendment.
In the previous years, both Twitter and Facebook took down all accounts found to be tied to the Iranian campaigns meant to interfere with politics in the United States. In 2018, Twitter announced they were not going to remove the InfoWars and Jones accounts. They received a lot of harsh criticism from that decision and ended up reversing it less than a month later.
Because of the controversy, Costolo believes separating account tiers will help face some of these challenges the social media companies are always facing.
Dil Bole Oberoi
