Did ex-Twitter CEO abuse President Obama?

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter CEO Dick Costolo filtered out abusive replies to President Obama during a Q&A session in May 2015, anonymous sources told BuzzFeed.



Costolo denied the report. "Total nonsense and laughably false as anybody who would speak on the record would tell you. Absurd," he said in a Twitter post.

According to the report, Costolo ordered employees to use a computer algorithm to weed out abusive or harassing tweets directed at Obama during the #AskPOTUS town hall. Twitter employees also manually removed tweets, the report says.

dick costolo 

✔@dickc

1/ Total nonsense and laughably false as anybody who would speak on the record would tell you. Absurd.

Not even going to link to it.

4:18 PM - 11 Aug 2016

 
•  3333 Retweets
 
•  114114 likes

Another anonymous source told BuzzFeed that Twitter did the same thing during a Q&A with Caitlyn Jenner.



Twitter responded to the BuzzFeed article about safety on the platform and steps taken by Costolo with a statement.

"We feel there are inaccuracies in the details and unfair portrayals but rather than go back and forth with BuzzFeed, we are going to continue our work on making Twitter a safer place," the statement reads