Twitter to Hire Experts, Accept Proposals to Stop Bad Actors

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey has brought his own company to task, for what he said is a less-than-stellar performance in handling malicious activity. More specifically, he said that he did not move quickly enough to take action against the Russian efforts to create divisions between Americans. Dorsey, who has previously expressed contrition for his slow reaction, has now made it clear that the company needs to take actions to prevent this from happening again, rather than just reacting after the fact.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Dorsey has stated that, “Twitter is looking to hire outside experts to help it measure the quality of conversations on the social network, echoing concerns expressed recently by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.”

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“We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough,” said Dorsey in one of ten posts on the topic. “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.”

He also promised that, in the future, Twitter will be more transparent in reporting its progress.

The Verge reports that Twitter also said it is “seeking proposals to determine exactly how the company is fostering ‘healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking’ versus abuse, spam, and manipulation.” Dorsey said the company is now looking to create a “systemic framework,” that will “increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation around the world.”

Twitter is accepting proposals until April 13 and plans to announce the first projects in July; “the chosen applicants will partner with Twitter and receive funding for their projects.”

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