Ashton Kutcher Explains Why He (Sorta) Quit Twitter

This week, 33-year-old Ashton Kutcher got folks pissed off by commenting on the Joe Paterno controversy, on his personal Twitter page. In one of his tweets, he defended the Penn State football coach (Joe Paterno). And as most of you know, Paterno was fired for allegedly covering up sexual abuse of young boys, by his former defensive coordinator. Because of Kutcher’s backlash (from defending Paterno), he has decided to hand over his personal twitter account, to a bunch of professionals. Peep Kutcher’s explanation, from his blog, below:

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. 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 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 broadcast 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 am truly sorry. And moreover am going to take action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. And as an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more deeply saddened by the events at Penn State.

A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. 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. My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that will not happen again.

So what do we think? Should Kutcher hand over his twitter to management? And even if defending Paterno WAS a mistake, isn’t Kutcher entitled to have his very own unique opinion–or not when it comes to sexual abuse?