First released by The Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo’s Tom McKay explores the actions of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in preventing the suspension of controversial conservative Twitter accounts.
Twitter, the social media site for people who like getting angry at things, has long been a haven for misogynistic harassers, white supremacists, and garden-variety trolls. The site has claimed to be working on this, but its supposed commitment to change has been repeatedly undermined by their decision to do things like add a blue verified checkmark to neo-Nazi rally organizer Jason Kessler’s profile or refuse to punish toxic users like conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones.
According to a Monday report in the Wall Street Journal, you can blame Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey personally for this. Dorsey has promised to solve the harassment issue on numerous occasions. But he’s also apparently terrified of offending the conservative movement—which is very loud, angry, and constantly spreading conspiracy theories about censorship on social media. So he’s mostly been spending his time trying to suck up to prominent conservatives and mumbling unconvincingly about free speech.
The Journal wrote that Dorsey’s two-faced attitude to the problem has extended to overruling his own staff’s decision to ban Jones and, incredibly, intervening to bring white supremacist Richard Spencer back to the network after he was banned: