Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk is arguably the most active person on the platform. He regularly shares updates about what’s happening at the company and what’s to come in the future as he looks to reshape the social network into “the town square of the internet” where everyone can speak their hearts out with lesser restrictions and moderation. The company has now issued an official statement detailing how it plans to go about Musk’s proposed changes for Twitter 2.0.
According to Twitter, public experimentation with new features is a thoughtful decision and it will not change. Shortly after Musk’s takeover, the company rolled out the revamped Twitter Blue service with the verification checkmark as part of it. The decision backfired as it led to mass impersonation, something the company couldn’t handle. It had to entirely withdraw the service. There have also been a few other such short-lived changes. And, there will be more in the future, as Twitter is “embracing public testing.”
“We believe that this open and transparent approach to innovation is healthy, as it enables us to move faster and gather user feedback in real-time. We believe that a service of this importance will benefit from feedback at scale,” Twitter said in the press release. The company also touched on another important topic that has become the subject of discussion around it lately — free speech. People have been testing Musk’s “free speech absolutist” stance with coordinated trolling campaigns. But, Twitter says its policies haven’t changed. The platform will allow people to speak freely, but it will de-amplify “violative content.”
Twitter 2.0 is a safe social media platform, the company says
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, recently said that the platform is less safe under Elon Musk because it doesn’t have enough experienced employees to look after its safety policies and identify potential issues. But, the company contents its Trust & Safety team is “strong and well-resourced”. All content moderators have the guidance needed to address policy violations. It also plans to rely on automated detection of hateful conduct, abusive behavior, and other violations, though.
The company adds that its “team of experts” is prepared to diffuse new methods of disruption that bad actors develop. Perhaps, they have already been doing their job efficiently. “Impressions on violative content are down over the past month, despite the growth in overall usage on the platform,” Twitter said. “As we embark on this new journey, we will make mistakes, we will learn, and we will also get things right.”
2022-12-01 15:10:06