Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Wants AI to Determine ‘Credible Voices’ on Platform

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated in a recent tweet that artificial intelligence may soon be used to determine “credible voices” on the social media platform.

Following New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman announcing that she will be “pulling back” from tweeting due to her issues with how discourse is handled on the platform, CEO Jack Dorsey suggested that A.I. may soon be used to help determine which users are “credible voices” that should be regarded highly.

“With exception of breaking news and my own stories, taking a break from this platform,” said Haberman. “No reason or prompt other than that it’s not really helping the discourse.” A number of excerpts from an article Haberman published in the New York Times state:

Twitter has stopped being a place where I could learn things I didn’t know, glean information that was free from errors about a breaking news story or engage in a discussion and be reasonably confident that people’s criticisms were in good faith.

The viciousness, toxic partisan anger, intellectual dishonesty, motive-questioning and sexism are at all-time highs, with no end in sight. It is a place where people who are understandably upset about any number of things go to feed their anger, where the underbelly of free speech is at its most bilious.

Twitter is now an anger video game for many users. It is the only platform on which people feel free to say things they’d never say to someone’s face

CEO Jack Dorsey quickly took to the platform to discuss the issues that Haberman raised in her article.

“But the medium has changed. Everyone I follow on the site seems to be tweeting more frequently, so I had to check in more frequently.”

This is the intention behind ranking the timeline. Show you “what matters” first, everything else still accessible. Lots of work still to do.

— jack (@jack) July 21, 2018

“On Twitter, everything is shrunk down to the same size, making it harder to discern what is a big deal and what is not. Tone often overshadows the actual news. All outrages appear equal.”

Def a problem. Believe we can help solve by showing more context and related conversation.

— jack (@jack) July 21, 2018

This is our primary job: “To be clear, Twitter is a useful and important platform. It’s a good aggregator for breaking news. I still check my feed to see breaking news developments, and I will continue to.”

Thinking a lot about how to promote more participation in conversation.

— jack (@jack) July 21, 2018

Powerful, but only if we help organize and not overwhelm people: ”And it is democratic—everyone gets to have a voice, whether they work for a local paper, a small TV station or one of the biggest newspapers in the world, or are not in the media business at all.”

— jack (@jack) July 21, 2018

It was then that Dorsey offered a suggestion to fix the “issue” of everyone on Twitter having an equal voice:

”The downside is that everyone is treated as equally expert on various topics.”

One of the biggest areas I believe we can help. Helping to determine credible voices per topic in real-time is extremely challenging, but believe it’s possible. Mix of algos and network.

— jack (@jack) July 21, 2018

How this algorithm will work or what personalities will be elevated as “credible voices,” remains to be seen. For a long time, it was believed that Twitter’s verification badge added a level of credibility to users by proving that they are indeed who they say they are, but that system has become seen as a badge of approval from Twitter in recent years — to be removed if someone misbehaves and bestowed upon those that Twitter deems worthy of honor.

Haberman isn’t the only journalist tired of Twitter, however. John Roberts of Fox News announced that he would also be leaving the platform saying: “In solidarity with my colleague @maggieNYT – whom I believe is an absolutely stellar journalist, I too am pulling back from Twitter. She has it right — a bilious anger video game.”

Breitbart Tech reported today that Twitter is hiding the accounts of top conservatives behind a “quality filter,” which in essence acts as a shadowban of the accounts.