Business Insider fires chief technology officer

Business Insider has fired chief technology officer Pax Dickinson due to offensive tweets, reports Jeff Bercovici of Forbes.com.

Bercovici writes, “There’s probably never a good time to get called out for using racial slurs and making rape jokes, but Dickinson’s contretemps came at a particularly unfortunate moment, with allegations that the tech industry is a hostile environment for women once again front and center thanks to a boorish presentation at TechCrunch’s massive Disrupt conference in San Francisco. TechCrunch quickly apologized for the presentation, for an app called Titstare that purported to capture images of men ogling breasts.

“Blodget’s immediate response to Valleywag’s story on Dickinson was to distance himself and the company from his rogue employee, saying, ‘We obviously don’t condone what he said.’

“Blodget, who didn’t immediately have a comment when I contacted him, has weathered his share of controversy, coming in for a heavy dose after he wrote a post headlined ‘Why Do People Hate Jews?’ But Blodget quickly quieted critics with his conciliatory manner, whereas Dickinson’s response was to threaten a physical confrontation.”

Read more here.