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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2018/sep/05/facebook-sheryl-sandberg-twitter-congress-russia
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| Version 4 | Version 5 |
|---|---|
| Twitter's Jack Dorsey faces more questions as Google snubs Congress – live | Twitter's Jack Dorsey faces more questions as Google snubs Congress – live |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Doyle: How can we ensure you have the proper incentives to address toxicity? | |
| Dorsey: Our singular focus in on improving health right now, and we realize that will have short term costs, such as removing accounts. | |
| Doyle: Right, there’s an economic disincentive to act because it removes people from the platform. | |
| Dorsey: We believe this is a growth vector for us, long term. Even if it hurts us in the short term. | |
| Doyle says that the entire premise of the hearing, that conservatives are being censored, is “a load of crap”. | |
| He then turns to bullying and harassment, which he says are real issues. | |
| Michael Doyle of Pennsylvania: “Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives – is that true?” | |
| Dorsey: No. | |
| Doyle reads further statements by Republicans that accuse Twitter of censoring conservatives. Dorsey denies them. | |
| Doyle points out the absurdity of Twitter having its own hearing without other social media companies, then turns to the “shadowbanning” issue: | |
| “You were equal opportunity shadowbanning, right?” | |
| Dorsey: Yes. | |
| Michael Burgess of Texas mentions the utility of Twitter as a real time news source, but says he is concerned about issues like a doctored photo of Meghan McCain that circulated over the weekend. | |
| Dorsey: That was unacceptable. We don’t want to use our scale as an excuse here. We can’t place the burden on the victims, and we need to build technology so we’re not waiting for reports ... This was an image, and we just didn’t apply the image filter to recognize what was going on in real time ... We are using that as a lesson. | |
| Burgess asks if Dorsey will apologize to the McCain family, and Dorsey says he will. | |
| Green asks about bots. | |
| Dorsey: We identify 8-10m accounts per week, and challenge them to prove they’re human. | |
| Gene Green of Texas raises the GDPR and privacy. He asks if Twitter will allow users in the US to opt out of tracking. | |
| Dorsey: Even before GDPR was enacted, we were actively making sure that the people that we serve have the controls to opt out of tracking across the web. We are very different from our peers in that the majority of what is on Twitter is public. | |
| John Shimkus, of Illinois is raising concerns about Twitter potentially suppressing controversial speech. The he asks about the verification process. | |
| Dorsey: To be very frank, our verification program is not where it needs to be. It needs a reboot and reworking. | |
| Dorsey says that verification started in order to verify the CDC during a swine flu outbreak, but needs to be addressed more comprehensively. This became a major issue when Twitter verified the account of Jason Kessler, the organizer of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. | |
| Diana DeGette of Colorado raises an Amnesty International report describing misogynistic abuse of women on Twitter. | |
| Does Twitter have reports of abuse based on demographics? Does Twitter have data on actions it has taken? | |
| Dorsey: We don’t believe we can create a digital public square for people if they don’t feel safe to participate, and that is our number one priority. | |
| Dorsey says they do have data on abuse reports and intends to create a public transparency report. | |
| “We don’t feel it’s fair that the victims of harassment have to do the work to report it,” he says. “We think that we can reduce the amount of abuse and create technology to recognize it before a report has to be made.” | |
| Fred Upton, “My name is Fred Upton and I have to bet that my initials are used more than any other. I would like to see civility brought back into public discourse ... How do you determine whether a user is tweeting to manipulate or divide the conversation?” | |
| Dorsey explains how Twitter is using “health” as a metric for conversations. “Right now we’re trying to determine what the indicators of conversational health are.” | |
| They are trying to figure out how to define and measure things like shared attention, shared facts, and variety of perspective. | |
| Dorsey also acknowledges that there is confusion around Twitter’s rules. | |
| Pallone asks if Twitter will do a civil rights audit with a third-party, and Dorsey says yes. | |
| Pallone: How many human content moderators do you employ in the US and how much do they get paid? | |
| Dorsey: We don’t like to think about it that way. | |
| Pallone also asks what their training is and whether they are instructed that politicians and celebrities should be treated the same. Dorsey says he’ll follow up on specific numbers. | |
| Dorsey: I do believe we should do more around protecting private individuals than we do to public figures. | |
| Pallone: I think it’s the height of hypocrisy that Trump and Republicans criticize Twitter for supposed bias. | |
| Pallone says Twitter has an obligation to ensure that at a minimum, it does no harm. He complains that the rules are unevenly enforced. | |
| Walden: Why does Twitter rely on users to report violations? | |
| Dorsey: This is a matter of scale... | |
| Unspoken here is that Twitter doesn’t necessarily have the financial wherewithal to go on a massive hiring spree for content moderators, the way that Google and Facebook have. | |
| Walden jumps into questioning about this “shadowban” issue, again. | |
| Why did this only happen to certain accounts, he asks. | |
| Dorsey: We use signals, hundreds of signals, to determine what to downrank and what to filter. We were using a signal of the behavior of people *following* accounts. | |
| Dorsey says that this signal impacted 600,000 accounts, so it wasn’t just a handful of Republicans who were affected, as one might be led to believe by the way this issue has been beaten to death. | |
| Dorsey addresses the “shadowbanning” scandal, which was actually an issue of certain accounts not appearing in auto-complete results. | Dorsey addresses the “shadowbanning” scandal, which was actually an issue of certain accounts not appearing in auto-complete results. |
| Our technology was using a decision making criteria that considers the behavior of people following these accounts. We decided that wasn’t fair, and corrected. We‘ll always improve our technology and algorithms to drive healthier usage, and measure the impartiality of outcomes. | Our technology was using a decision making criteria that considers the behavior of people following these accounts. We decided that wasn’t fair, and corrected. We‘ll always improve our technology and algorithms to drive healthier usage, and measure the impartiality of outcomes. |
| More from the opening statement: | More from the opening statement: |
| “Our early and strong defense of open and free exchange has enabled Twitter to be THE platform for activists, marginalized communities, whistleblowers, journalists, governments and the most influential people around the world. Twitter will always default to open and free exchange. A default to free expression left unchecked can generate risks and dangers for people. It’s important Twitter distinguishes between people’s opinions and behaviors, and disarms behavior intending to silence another person, or adversely interfere with their universal human rights.” | “Our early and strong defense of open and free exchange has enabled Twitter to be THE platform for activists, marginalized communities, whistleblowers, journalists, governments and the most influential people around the world. Twitter will always default to open and free exchange. A default to free expression left unchecked can generate risks and dangers for people. It’s important Twitter distinguishes between people’s opinions and behaviors, and disarms behavior intending to silence another person, or adversely interfere with their universal human rights.” |
| Jack Dorsey is now offering his opening statement: As he did this morning, he is reading the statement off his phone and simultaneously tweet-storming it. | Jack Dorsey is now offering his opening statement: As he did this morning, he is reading the statement off his phone and simultaneously tweet-storming it. |
| Here’s the beginning of the Twitter thread: | Here’s the beginning of the Twitter thread: |
| Thank you Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Pallone, and the committee, for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Twitter to the American people. I look forward to our conversation about our commitment to impartiality, transparency, and accountability. | Thank you Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Pallone, and the committee, for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Twitter to the American people. I look forward to our conversation about our commitment to impartiality, transparency, and accountability. |
| Pallone: This hearing appears to be just one more mechanism to raise money and generate outrage. | Pallone: This hearing appears to be just one more mechanism to raise money and generate outrage. |
| Nevertheless, Pallone says, Twitter has issues and should be better at dealing with misinformation and abuse. | Nevertheless, Pallone says, Twitter has issues and should be better at dealing with misinformation and abuse. |