Twitter Seeks Help To Tackle Online Abuse
In an attempt to create a better online environment, Twitter has asked for help to develop a tool to measure the health of the social media platform and check if it is making a good contribution to the public.
"We're committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress," Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey posted on Twitter on March 1.
Dorsey pointed out that several consequences came along with the benefits of instant messaging. He mentioned that Twitter was being used to abuse, harass, and manipulate people and that the company was not happy with what was happening.
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With this, Dorsey and the whole Twitter team said that they are looking for anyone who could help with their cause.
"Twitter's health will be built and measured by how we help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking; conversely, abuse, spam and manipulation will detract from it," the online news and social networking service wrote in a blog.
Twitter also said that they are looking for "outside experts" to help them in measuring the health of Twitter and to determine if the social media platform was growing.
According to the blog, this particular movement was inspired by Cortico, a nonprofit organization aiming to strengthen and unify the public sphere of the US. Cortico has designed metrics that determine "the health of public conversation" of media platforms. It has also developed tools that empower the interaction between the news media and the audiences.
The organization, in a blog post, named four principles that could determine "a healthy public sphere": shared attention, shared reality, variety, and receptivity. With these principles, Cortico will work up until they develop indicators.
Twitter also wrote that anyone interested could submit a proposal which includes a set of health metrics before April 13. The successful applicants will be funded by Twitter to collaborate with the company's team.
