Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, appeared before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday to reveal problems arising from the Internet. In an admission, the CEO said that there were about 600,000 accounts that were 'unfairly filtered.' That number included members of the government, particularly members of the Congress.
These 600,000 Twitter accounts, according to Dorsey, were included among search results that wouldn't show up when an auto-search was initiated. He attributed such an error to 'behavioral signals.' Global News said that the CEO clearly stressed this didn't account for political ideology, further clearing up in a message to the Congress that political color didn't paint any decisions they made on their website or the rules that they created for it.
The 'behavioral signals,' as explained, filtered out results according to new algorithms implemented by Twitter. It was meant as a deterrent to abusive messages or Twitter 'troll's out to disrupt friendly discussions. Twitter did it by inspecting accounts. If a user was found to have more than one account, then it was flagged for removal from standard auto-searches.
Jack Dorsey cleared up that the company has since removed that algorithm from its website, simply because it wasn't 'fair.' Dorsey said that Twitter values 'accountability and transparency' above all else. With the algorithm, the CEO said that what they did made the website behave far from how it was intended, which, in his eyes, made Twitter 'fail' to uphold its values.
Jack Dorsey brought along with his data for all the members of Congress that were filtered out by the algorithm. The Daily Mail reports that as he showed it, he pointed out that these were members of both the Republican and the Democratic party. Dorsey, using the data, said that there wasn't any noticeable difference between the number of views in each account, Republican or Democrat.
The meeting was requested by the Congress right after the Republicans, including president Donald Trump, cried foul. They hurled accusations toward Twitter, including that it was 'shadow-banning' voices of the conservative wing. Twitter has denied this, especially since the outspoken president took to Twitter, throwing shade against 'social media, under which Twitter is classified.
Dorsey wasn't the only one who had to clear up why their website algorithms acted the way it did. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also cleared up that they had to do it since there was foreign intervention using social media, evidence of which the Facebook COO showed.
