Ashton Kutcher has surrendered in the war against Internet trolls, and has handed over his Twitter account to his production company, Katalyst HQ.
Kutcher had tweeted out a note of support to former Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who was fired on Wednesday night, which caught a lot of heat from followers who believed the firing was justified.
*Paterno was fired over the allegations that another former Penn State football coach allegedly committed sexual acts with as many as 20 young boys. Paterno was informed by a witness in 2002, and told his superiors, but ultimately never followed up.
You can be the judge on whether or not he should have been fired/not fired, there are plenty on both sides.
Back to Kutcher, the “Two and a Half Men” star returned to Twitter to face the backlash, admitting that he had no idea of the case, and thought it was a “football thing.” He quickly apologized for being ignorant to the story, and tweeting before having the facts.
Check out the post from his official blog:
Up until today I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become to big to be managed by a single individual. When I started using twitter it was a communication platform that people could say what they are thinking in real time and if their facts where wrong the community would quickly and helpfully reframe an opinion. It was a conversation, a community driven education tool, and opinion center that encouraged healthy debate. It seems that today that twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcasted around the world and misinformation becomes volatile fodder for critics.
Last night after returning home from work I walked by the television and simply saw a headline that Joe Paterno had been fired. Having no more information than that, I assumed that he had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach. As a football fan and someone who had watched Joe’s career move from that of legend/innovator to a head coach that fulfilled his duty in the booth, I assumed that the university had let him go due to football related issues. With that assumption (how dare I assume) I posted a tweet defending his career. I then when about my evening, had some dinner, did a little work, and about an hour later turned on ESPN where I got the full story. I quickly went back on my twitter account and found a hailstorm of responses calling me an “idiot” and several other expletives that I’ve become accustom to hearing for almost anything I post. I quickly retracted and deleted my previous post, however that didn’t seem enough to satisfy people’s outrage at my misinformed post. I truly am sorry if I offended anyone and more over am going to take action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible for delivering an informed opinion and not spreading gossip or rumors through my twitter feed. While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more that a fun tool to communicate with people. While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure the quality of it’s content. My sincere apologies to anyone who I have offended. It was a mistake that I don’t think will happen again.
We actually feel bad for Ashton here. Not only did he make a simple mistake, that could actually be his opinion. A.) He should be allowed to have his own opinion of a situation. B.) There are many who are against this firing. He would not be in the minority.
Good luck Ashton.
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