During an interview with CNN over the weekend, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that while Twitter employees may be more left-leaning, Twitter does not discriminate against users based on their political opinions.
In a clip of the conversation posted by CNN’s Brian Stelter, he referenced President Trump’s rebuke of Twitter for allegedly “discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices.” Dorsey said the definition of shadowbanning is hard to pin down, but said the point of the conversation is whether Twitter is discriminating based on ideology. According to Dorsey, it does not.
“The real question behind the question is, ‘Are we doing something according to political ideology or viewpoints?’ And we are not. Period,” Dorsey said. “We do not look at content with regards to political viewpoint or ideology. We look at behavior, and we use that behavior as a signal to add to relevance.”
“We need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is left, more left-leaning, and I think it’s important to articulate our bias and to share it with people so people understand us, but we need to remove all bias from how we act and our policies and our enforcement,” Dorsey explained.
In a previous interview with Guy Benson, Dorsey discussed how he believes Twitter, as a company, is an ideological diverse place, but that people are afraid to vocalize their views on certain issues. Dorsey called that “not acceptable.”
The conversation about Twitter’s alleged bias against conservatives occured after Twitter took action against Alex Jones and InfoWars.
On the topic of spreading misinformation on Twitter, a claim many make against Jones, Stelter asked if Dorsey’s “job” is to make sure people are not misinformed on Twitter. Dorsey replied by saying, “I think we need to be really thoughtful about what that means. What is misinformation? And how do we help people determine credibility?” Stelter pushed Dorsey, claiming that it’s probably “pretty easy” to crack down on fake news stories, while Dorsey maintained it is not that simple. He referenced, however, Twitter’s new plan of putting things in context; for instance, including tweets that claim a fake news story is fake news surrounding the original tweet.
“We have not figured this out, but I do think it would be dangerous for a company like ours, going back to your point, to be arbiters of truth,” Dorsey said.
“We can’t just keep changing randomly, based on our viewpoints, because that just adds to the fear of companies like ours, making these judgments according to our own personal views of who we like and who we don’t like, and taking that out upon those people,” Dorsey explained. “Those viewpoints change over time… and that just feels random and that doesn’t feel fair, and it doesn’t earn anyone’s trust, because you can’t actually see what’s behind it.”
