The following is a statement from the Counter Extremism Project: 

“The Counter Extremism Project welcomes press reports that Twitter Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo has publicly acknowledged his platform’s failure to combat online abuse. This is clearly – even dangerously – overdue.

“CEP has been attempting to engage with Twitter for several months on the issue of extremists’ abuse of Twitter to spread hate, physically threaten and incite violence. We have sent three letters detailing the findings of our Digital Disruption campaign, outlining our proposed practical changes to Twitter’s policies and requesting a meeting with the platform’s leadership to discuss how we can support their efforts. We received one boilerplate response. Twitter has a moral and social responsibility to aggressively confront this issue now.

“The first step is acknowledging the problem. The next and most important step is working to remedy the problem. CEP stands ready and willing to work with Twitter on implementing stronger, more proactive policies that can put an end to online abuse.”