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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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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I don't.... WANT... an algorithm. I want an uncurrated timeline of the posts from the people I follow in chronological order!
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Wow, that's a lotta bullsh1t
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Who censors his bullshit? Lol.
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I think we should =)
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You need to be regulated like a utility. You cannot be censoring Americans because you disagree with their political views! THAT is not right! The END!
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You want twitter to be state regulated? That doesn't sound very "libertarian" and "free market" to me. p.s. Alex Jones has not has his "freedom of speech" in any way limited.
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has not has - great writing
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TRANSLATION: Yup. We discriminate. You got us!
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You don’t get it… YOU. SHOULDN’T. BE. DOING. ANY. OF. THAT. THERE. IS. NO. NEED. FOR. IT.
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Perjury... you have now lied to Congress.
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in other words the process you decided was fair didn't give you the results you wanted so you introduced bias
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By trying to be fair, you are being unfair.
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