Thank you Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Pallone, and the committee, for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Twitter to the American people. I look forward to our conversation about our commitment to impartiality, transparency, and accountability.
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A default to free expression left unchecked can generate risks and dangers for people. It’s important Twitter distinguishes between people’s opinions and behaviors, and disarms behavior intending to silence another person, or adversely interfere with their universal human rights.
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We build our policies and rules with a principle of impartiality: objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons. If we learn we failed to create impartial outcomes, we work hard to fix.
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In the spirit of accountability and transparency: recently we failed our intended impartiality. Our algorithms were unfairly filtering 600,000 accounts, including some members of Congress, from our search auto-complete and latest results. We fixed it. But how did it happen?
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Our technology was using a decision making criteria that considers the behavior of people following these accounts. We decided that wasn’t fair, and corrected. We‘ll always improve our technology and algorithms to drive healthier usage, and measure the impartiality of outcomes.
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Bias in algorithms is an important topic. Our responsibility is to understand, measure, and reduce accidental bias due to factors such as the quality of the data used to train our algorithms. This is an extremely complex challenge facing everyone applying artificial intelligence.
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For our part, machine learning teams at Twitter are experimenting with these techniques and developing roadmaps to ensure present and future machine learning models uphold a high standard when it comes to algorithmic fairness. It’s an important step towards ensuring impartiality.
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Looking at the data, we analyzed tweets sent by all members of the House and Senate, and found no statistically significant difference between the number of times a tweet by a Democrat is viewed versus a Republican, even after our ranking and filtering of tweets has been applied.
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Also, there’s a distinction we need to make clear. When people follow you, you’ve earned that audience. And we have a responsibility to make sure they can see your tweets. We do not have a responsibility, nor you a right, to amplify your tweets to audiences that don’t follow you.
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What our algorithms decide to show in shared spaces, like search results, is based on thousands of signals that constantly learn and evolve over time. Some of those signals are engagement, some are the number of abuse reports. We balance all of these to prevent gaming our system.
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We acknowledge the growing concern people have of the power held by companies like Twitter. We believe it’s dangerous to ask Twitter to regulate opinions or be the arbiter of truth. We’d rather be judged by the impartiality of outcomes, and criticized when we fail this principle.
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In closing, when I think of our work, I think of my mom and dad in St. Louis, a Democrat and a Republican. We had lots of frustrating and heated debates, but looking back, I appreciate I was able to hear and challenge different perspectives. And I appreciate I felt safe to do so.
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We believe Twitter helps people connect to something bigger than themselves, shows all the amazing things happening in the world, and all the things we need to acknowledge and address. We‘re constantly learning how to make it freer and healthier for all to participate. Thank you.
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Your refusal to understand that not all voices deserve a platform is harmful. Even w your TOS which I respect & agree to follow, Twitter could be way better imo. Your people apply the penalties inconsistently & your slavish devotion to centrism puts marginalized people at risk.pic.twitter.com/Q5Y71gk44i
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And they are harassed constantly
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And suspended, all the while their assailants get off scot free even when going to outright illegal lengths like threats and encouraging suicide.
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You forgot "nazis"
@jack that's oddhttps://twitter.com/jack/status/1037399119810232321 …Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Again, except sex workers
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And queer folk.
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Problem is you can SAY anything; you can say you’re impartial, doesn’t make it true. Nobody is completely without bias, therefore nobody is qualified to make censorship algorithms in the first place...
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This is absolute nonsense, Jack, and you know it. If it were "the platform for activists and marginalised communities" you would have banned homophobes, TERFs, MRAs, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and right-wing harassers.
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