'I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread gossip or rumors through my Twitter feed,' writes the 'Two and a Half Men' star on his blog as he explains about the decision.
- Nov 11, 2011
AceShowbiz - Ashton Kutcher is making sure he didn't make the same mistake twice. After being blasted for defending Penn State football coach Joe Paterno on Twitter, the "Two and a Half Men" star announced through his Thursday, November 10 blog post that he is handing over the control of his personal account to his production company, Katalyst Media.
"Up until today, I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual," the 33-year-old began his posting. "When I started using Twitter, it was a communication platform that people could say what they were thinking in real time and if their facts were wrong the community would quickly and helpfully reframe an opinion."
"It seems that today that Twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcast around the world and misinformation becomes volatile fodder for critics," he continued before explaining that he posted his ill-informed tweet based on assumption that JoePa "had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach".
Ashton went on to admit that "a collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted." He wrote, "I feel responsible to deliver informed opinions and not spread 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 than 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 as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content," he said in conclusion. "My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that will not happen again."
Ashton's apologetic move didn't stop there. Hours later, the actor husband of Demi Moore posted a picture of himself posing with a "I'm with stupid" sign pointing to his face. It quickly drew some of his followers to give positive feedback. "You're still human, you corrected it. That's commendable," and "You made a mistake, and then you did the right thing by apologizing for it," are only a few of them.
Ashton posted his controversial tweet on Wednesday, November 9 night. "How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste," he wrote at the time. After receiving a slew of angry responses, he deleted the tweet and wrote, "As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won't happen again."
