Twitter’s Dorsey apologizes to McCain family for ‘unacceptable’ tweet

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday said he would apologize to the McCain family for taking too long to remove a doctored image that appeared to threaten Meghan McCain.

“That was unacceptable,” Dorsey said while appearing in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “And we don’t want to use our scale as an excuse here.” 

He said he would apologize “personally” to the McCain family.

{mosads}On Thursday, while memorial services were held for the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in Arizona, a Twitter user posted a doctored image appearing to threaten to shoot Meghan McCain.

Her husband, Ben Domenech, later tweeted at Dorsey that night, criticizing him because the image remained posted. The image was deleted the next day.

Dorsey was pressed Wednesday on the issue by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who said “it shouldn’t take hours for something that’s that egregious to be addressed.” 

Dorsey said Twitter is currently building technology that will allow it to identify posts that should be taken down.

“We did take way too many hours to act, and we are using that as a lesson to help improve our systems,” Dorsey said.

After the image was taken down, Domenech deleted his tweet at Dorsey but wrote in another tweet that he still wants Twitter to explain why it didn’t take down the post sooner. 

I am going to delete the initial tweet now so no one has to see it. Still want an explanation for why something so obviously in violation took so much attention for Twitter to react.

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) August 31, 2018

Dorsey testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday afternoon on the social media platform’s policies related to alleged bias. In the morning, he and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on election interference.