Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey is eagerly searching for solutions to trolling, hate speeches, cyber-bullying, and political manipulation on the social media platform. To be able to achieve that, Twitter is interested in understanding the nature, or “health,” of conversations on its platform.
Jack Dorsey tweeted a long thread acknowledging the platform’s non-successes in handling harassment and is asking for ideas to help fix it.
We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.
— jack (@jack) March 1, 2018
On an official blog post, it stated that:
Twitter’s health will be built and measured by how we help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking; conversely, abuse, spam and manipulation will detract from it. We are looking to partner with outside experts to help us identify how we measure the health of Twitter, keep us accountable to share our progress with the world and establish a way forward for the long-term.
How Would the Proposals Work?
Cortico, a nonprofit research organization had introduced the idea and has its own suggestions for measuring conversation on Twitter. However, with this initiative, Twitter is casting a wider net, seeking “proposed health metrics, and methods for capturing, measuring, evaluating and reporting on such metrics.”
The organization that wins the bid will have access to Twitter’s data and will be expected to put out research, products, and suggestions for how to foster healthy dialogue on the platform.
Thrilled to see our work with @cortico on public sphere health indicators referenced today by @jack as a step toward improving public discourse. Read more about our plans at https://t.co/jPMbHeNzwO https://t.co/MK1uTlQEpw
— Social Machines (@socialmachines) March 1, 2018
Jack Dorsey acknowledges that Twitter’s approach to trolling had been largely reactive, instead of proactive. He explained that the issues would be dealt with using the doctor-patient approach.
We’ve focused most of our efforts on removing content against our terms, instead of building a systemic framework to help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking. This is the approach we now need.
— jack (@jack) March 1, 2018
While working to fix it, we‘ve been accused of apathy, censorship, political bias, and optimizing for our business and share price instead of the concerns of society. This is not who we are, or who we ever want to be.
— jack (@jack) March 1, 2018
Dorsey regrets Twitter’s failure to forestall abuse on the platform.
Why? We love instant, public, global messaging and conversation. It’s what Twitter is and it’s why we‘re here. But we didn’t fully predict or understand the real-world negative consequences. We acknowledge that now, and are determined to find holistic and fair solutions.
— jack (@jack) March 1, 2018
Do you want to be a part of this? Well, you’re in luck–the proposals for Twitter’s healthy conversations initiative are due April 13.
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