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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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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Simple fix: hire more conservatives. This isn’t an AI error, it’s human error internally that can’t detect bias.
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Democrats are good con men.
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Oh it was a big mistake because you were caught shadow banning? More lies.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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How did it happen, really lol? Simple you targeted conservative media because you disagree with them, you clearly don't actually believe in free speech.. last CNN, MSNBC, and
@Jack are#EnemyOfThePeopleThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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"But how did it happen?" You damn well know how it happened You're acting like a mine operator who skimps on safety procedures and materials and when the mine finally collapses stands around going "This was a terrible ACCIDENT, how did this happen?!"pic.twitter.com/7sYckUk0Wp
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Because you hire liberal employees that cant separate their personal hurt feelings from their job?
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Question: How did it happen? Answer: Because you wanted it to.pic.twitter.com/07rQqe5gFL
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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You did that for 24 hrs and put the ban right back in place. We know, we are the people of America and we deserve the same right of the
#1A.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Let me tell you about your algorithms, Jack. They'll allow serial abusers and those making outright death threats to remain on Twitter to abuse others, while they suspend someone for swearing at those same abusers. That's all kinds of screwed up.
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