Social media site Twitter this week sought to assess its own health amid the alarming use of its platform to spread disinformation, propaganda and provocation.
“We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough,” said co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey.
The company will partner with experts to measure the impact of spam, abuse and manipulation, and to determine the site’s health by the quality of debates, conversation and critical thinking.
In fact it had already begun looking into what are known as bots, described as having the ability to artificially amplify a person or cause and which manipulated social networks in the 2016 elections in the United States.
“This is not who we are, or who we ever want to be,” Dorsey said.
It’s good initiative shown by a social media platform. Twitter’s acknowledgment of its role is a definite move forward from social media companies’ opposition to governments’ moves to contain the spread of fake news.
For example, when Germany proposed the idea of imposing a fine on companies that do not remove hate speech, incitements to violence, and other “obviously illegal” content from their platforms, critics feared this would give social media companies undue power to determine what people can say online. Social media companies also said they were just that—platforms, who had no business meddling with content.
Indeed fake news—an oxymoron, as some have pointed out—is a global scourge.
Here, one of the most social-media active countries, disinformation, hatred and empty chatter pollute an environment that was, in the first place, created to strengthen relationships, push legitimate information and encourage informed discourse.
As one of the largest social media companies takes stock of the health of its environment, it’s a good idea to do something similar. Evaluate whether our personal or professional profiles serve the purpose for which they were created. Or, have we allowed them to take on a life of their own, driven by all the things that give technology a bad name? Do the advantages of staying connected still outweigh the toll it takes on our world view, or even mental well-being?
Are we even sure our personal relationships are safe from the malice and venom spewed by bots or bot-like users among our network?
These days, critical thinking almost always falls prey to manipulators’ ill design. Responsible users will ensure that their knowledge and their opinions are fed by legitimate sources, not sinister ones.