Tech

Twitter's CEO just admitted the platform has problems, and he's asking for help to fix them

Key Points
  • Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted on Thursday that Twitter has a problem.
  • He said bots, troll armies and others are taking advantage of the social network.
  • Dorsey is asking for help and is accepting proposals from people who think they can make Twitter better.
Jack Dorsey is CEO of both Twitter and Square
Teresa Kroeger | Getty Images

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey took to Twitter on Thursday to admit that the platform, in its current implementation, has problems. And he's asking for help to fix it.

"We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers," Dorsey said. "We aren't proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough."

Tweet

Dorsey said Twitter has tried to fix issues by removing content that doesn't meet its use terms but that, in doing so, has been "accused of apathy, censorship, political bias, and optimizing for our business and share price instead of the concerns of a society."

In other words, Twitter has found itself in a bit of a Catch-22. Dorsey said Twitter now needs to "help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking," and is working with two independent firms, Cortico and Social Machines, to try to learn how to better gauge the conversations taking place on Twitter.

Dorsey also said Twitter wants additional help and is opening a request for proposals (RFP) in an effort to discover new ideas on how it can improve the platform. Firms picked to work with Twitter will get "public data access" and "meaningful funding for their research," Dorsey said.