Jack Dorsey Testifies on Twitter's Response to Foreign Influence Operations

Twitter's Jack Dorsey testified at the September 5, 2018 hearing "Foreign Influence Operations’ Use of Social Media Platforms". Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook also testified. Google was invited but declined to attend. Here is a brief outline of Mr. Dorsey's opening statement:

I. Opening

• Twitter strives to be a global town square
• Must be a trusted and healthy place
• Abuse, malicious automation, and manipulation detract from it
• Never more important than during elections
• Share concern with committee about malicious foreign influence
• Hold themselves publicly accountable for progress

II. Russian influence in 2016 election, lessons learned

A. Retrospective review

• Twitter conducted a comprehensive review of 2016 election activity 
• Identified 50,258 accounts that were automated, linked to Russia, and tweeting election-related content, representing 0.016% of total accounts
• These accounts constituted 1.00% of election-related tweets; totaling 2.12 million tweets
• Twitter barred paid ads from two of the most active accounts generating paid content; affiliated with Russia Today (“RT”)
• Donating the $1.9 million that RT spent globally on advertising to academic research into election and civic engagement

Twitter Safety, Algorithms + Congress

Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey will speak to Congress on September 5, 2018 regarding algorithms and content monitoring. 

On a related note @TwitterSafety published/tweeted a good article about partners they selected to help measure and manage conversational health online, @OxExpPsy and @UniLeiden. From the article:

The project brings together scholars with different backgrounds and expertise, bridging political science, communication, and computer science. The six scholars working together across four universities will combine deep social scientific subject expertise with strong technical expertise to develop and adapt measures of healthy conversations on Twitter.

Plus here is a curious article detailing a Russian Twitter information campaign conducted under the hashtag #VaccinateUS that was meant to sow division on the subject. Observably though, it was an issue that failed to generate much heat. From a review of the tweets on @TwitterSafety, it looks like the platform is getting ever more practiced at protecting the social media community.