Twitter has since apologized for not taking action against Sayoc for making threats, and vowed to do better in the future. "We made a mistake when Rochelle Ritchie first alerted us to the threat made against her. The Tweet clearly violated our rules and should have been removed. We are deeply sorry for that error," the Twitter Safety account tweeted on October 26th. "We are investigating what happened and will continue to work to improve how we handle concerns raised by anyone on Twitter. We want Twitter to be a place where people feel safe, and we know we have lot of work to do."

Hey @Twitter remember when I reported the guy who was making threats towards me after my appearance on @FoxNews and you guys sent back a bs response about how you didn't find it that serious. Well guess what it's the guy who has been sending #bombs to high profile politicians!!!! pic.twitter.com/xBY8FMbqnq — R O C H E L L E (@RochelleRitchie) October 26, 2018

Apologies from Twitter for mishandling abuse on its site have become all too common, which shows just how rampant threats are. Not only that, but, since it can't seem to figure out how to fully solve the problem, its apologies have basically become meaningless at this point. And even though the company has been making some progress and keeps rolling out features designed to mitigate the issue, like making it easier to report and filter hostile tweets, its system clearly isn't working. It feels like we talk about this topic once a month, if not once a week.

After I wrote about Twitter not wanting to ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, someone tweeted that they hoped my family got deported, presumably because of my Mexican American background. After I reported the tweet, I got an email from the company saying that, like Sayoc's threat to Ritchie, it did not violate any guidelines.

From a business standpoint, it's understandable that Twitter doesn't want to make decisions that will seem guided by "political ideology," as CEO Jack Dorsey said in written testimony to Congress. But being able to filter out hatred from its site isn't about politics: There's a difference between letting people express themselves freely and allowing them to openly make threats, spread hate speech or say things like "I hope your family gets deported."