Twitter boss seeks help with online abuse

Twitter has asked for help in devising a "health check" to measure its contribution to public conversation.

It said it hoped to work with "outside experts" and is inviting proposals.

Its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, said the platform's "instant, public, global messaging" had "real-world negative consequences" that Twitter had neither fully predicted nor understood.

Twitter has repeatedly been criticised for the amount of abuse and propaganda posted by some of its users.

In support of its new stance, Mr Dorsey tweeted a link to an organisation called Cortico.

It identifies "shared attention", "shared reality" (which it describes as "using the same facts"), variety of opinion and reception to different views as indicators of a healthy public conversation.

Lisa-Maria Neudert, from the Oxford Internet Institute, said it was a positive step to see Twitter prepared to share its data with researchers and fund their work, but questioned how the measurements might be made.

"I'm not sure if you can measure health of a discourse," she told the BBC.

"If the shared topic of discourse is a terrible propaganda message that's not very healthy."

SOURCE: BBC NEWS
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