TECH TALK

Chief executive Jack Dorsey admitted unfairness to U.S. Lawmakers. He said Twitter’s algorithms have unfairly reduced the visibility of 600,000 accounts. Some of the accounts affected were members of Congress.

This is after several Republicans, including President Donald Trump, accused Twitter of bias. These accusations prompted investigation when Twitter added a quality filter to the site. Some users found their tweets no longer appeared, properly known as a “shadow ban”. Dorsey doubled-down on his claim that Twitter does not ban or hide users based on ideology.

Dorsey was asked directly if Twitter had taken action to censor conservatives. He said no. Dorsey further said Twitter does not use political ideology to make decisions. The decisions included range from rule enforcement to ranking content. However, during the hearing, he admitted to mistakes.

Previously, accounts could suffer in rankings due to the behavior of their followers. An example would be a public figure who was followed by several abusive “troll” accounts. The public figure would likely, under the old policy, appear lower in search results. This was through no fault of the account holder.

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to further investigate concerns. The worry is that social platforms are hurting competition and impairing the exchange of ideas. Dorsey claims additional efforts will be made to address issues with Twitter’s rules. He also hopes to make the rules “more approachable”.

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