Twitter CEO Speaks Out About Harassment on the Platform

Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Twitter, recently spoke out about how the social network that he created is being misused in a wide variety of ways. This conversation occurred at the recent TED conference that was held, a talk that involved Dorsey speaking on numerous occasions. Dorsey’s statements came after the journalist that broke the story regarding Cambridge Analytica, the scandal that lead to Facebook’s decline in trustworthiness among the general public, stated that he felt like people like Dorsey as well as a variety of other tech entrepreneurs had not done enough to prevent abuse and harassment on the platforms that they have created.

Dorsey followed up his statements acknowledging the widespread harassment that is occurring on Twitter by vowing that his company would try to make the social media a better place and reduce the amounts of abuse that are occurring on a regular basis. Dorsey also expressed some regret regarding the kind of direction he took when he first made Twitter, stating that he would have chosen not to care about the preferences of the users to the same extent that he did because of the fact that this is what lead to Twitter becoming such a breeding ground for this level of harassment and abuse.

“If I had to start the service again, I probably would not emphasize the follower count as much. I would not emphasize the ‘like’ (heart) count as much.”, said Jack Dorsey. Adding further, "I don’t think I would even create ‘like’ in the first place — because it doesn’t actually push what we believe now to be the most important thing, which is healthy contribution back to the network.”

Dorsey also mentioned that as of today around 38% of abusive/inappropriate content is flagged by algorithms and automated systems, so Tweeters don’t actually have to report them manually. “That’s up from 0 percent about a year ago.” Yet, human moderators still review reported tweets before deleting them.

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Dorsey also addressed the vast amount of misinformation that tends to spread through Twitter, claiming that his platform needs to be better at preventing the fake news and misinformation from spreading on such a regular basis. Whether or not Dorsey will actually be implementing the required changes remains to be seen, but it’s a ray of hope to see a tech mogul actually taking responsibility for once.


Photo: Austin Braun / Twitter.

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