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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took the stage today at TED conference. But instead of giving the standard speech, he answered questions from Chris Anderson, TED, and Whitney Pennington Rodgers.
For most of the interview, Dorsey described Twitter's actions to combat abuse and misinformation, but Anderson explained why critics of society sometimes find these measures so inadequate and unsatisfactory. He compared Twitter to the Titanic and Dorsey to the captain, listening to pbadengers' concerns about the upcoming iceberg, before returning to the bridge and showing "this extraordinary calm."
"It's democracy at stake, it's our culture at stake," Anderson said, echoing remarks made yesterday at a conference by journalist Carole Cadwalladr. So why is Twitter not addressing these issues more urgently?
"We work as fast as we can, but speed will not do the job," Dorsey said. "It's our goal, our priority, our understanding of the fundamentals of the network."
He also said that although Twitter can "do a lot of superficial things to solve the problems you're talking about," this is not the real solution.
"We want the changes to last and that means we're going really, really deeply," said Dorsey.
According to him, this means rethinking how Twitter encourages user behavior. He suggested that the service works best as an "interest-based network", in which you log in and see the content corresponding to your interests, regardless of the contributor posted, accounts, and then expand their number. subscribers in turn.
Dorsey recalled that when the team started to set up the service, she decided to make subscribers count "big and bold," which naturally prompted people to focus on the subject.
"Was it the right decision at the time? Probably not, he says. "If I had to start the service again, I would not emphasize as much the number of followers … I do not think I would create" I like "in the first place."
Since he is not starting from scratch, Dorsey suggested he try to find ways to redefine Twitter so that the "bias" is diverted from accounts to interest.
Specifically, Rodgers asked about frequent criticism that Twitter has not found a way to always ban service to Nazis.
"We currently have a situation where this term is used quite loosely," Dorsey said. "We simply can not take the slightest mention of this word accusing anyone else as a factual indication of whether anyone can be removed from the platform."
He added that Twitter removes users connected to hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the US Nazi Party, as well as those who publish hateful images or who are guilty of conduct that violates Twitter's terms and conditions. – terms that Dorsey said The company rewrote to make them "human readable" and to emphasize that the top priority is to fight against abuse and hateful content.
"Our goal is to eliminate the workload of victims," Dorsey said.
He also highlighted the efforts that Twitter has already announced for measure (and then improve) conversational health and to use machine learning to automatically detect abusive content. (The company said today that 38% of the abusive content against which Twitter is taking action is being proactively found.)
And while Dorsey said he was less interested in maximizing the time spent on Twitter and maximizing "what people get out of it and what they want to draw from it," Anderson suggested that Twitter could have trouble achieving this goal since it is a public company. a business model based on advertising. Would Dorsey really be willing to see the time spent on service decrease, even if it meant improving the conversation?
"More relevance means less time on the service, and that's fine," said Dorsey, adding that Twitter could still run ads for relevant content.
In terms of how the company is currently measuring success, Dorsey said it focuses primarily on daily active users and, secondly, on "conversation channels – we want to encourage good contributions." to the network ".
Returning to Dorsey himself, Rodgers wondered if the position of CEO of two publicly traded companies (the other is Square) gave him time to solve these problems.
"My goal is to build a business that does not depend on me and survives me," he said. "The situation between the two companies and the way my time is spent immediately forces me to create evolving, decentralized frameworks that do not require me to be in the smallest detail … That's true of any organization that goes beyond the original founder moment. "
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