Yes, I don’t want to make you late for the cabinet meeting. Thank you so much, Minister Tang.
Thank you for that feedback. We can take that back. That’s very helpful for us. Thank you.
I also think that, given the work that we have to do in front of us with healthy conversations, and the open and public services of the platform, we’re concentrating on those, and directing people, really… What we say is use the best tools for what you need.
Our view is we want people to do what they need to do to stay safe. I think there’s been a lot of discussion over the years about end-to-end encryption. It’s something that we think about a lot.
If you’re seeking to add really complex, high-risk conversations, we would hope that you would use the very best services in the world. Many of them are free. We’ve worked with a lot of those groups over time.
At Twitter, if you’re a front line defender, and you’re speaking openly on our platform, that’s one thing. If you’re…
They might use Signal, or they might use something else. What we’re seeing is a diversification of, and a specialization in, what are the best tools, redundancies in those, and diversity in those.
One of the things that’s most interesting to me is that, when we look at how front line defenders and activists are using our service, I think one of the things that’s most interesting about it is that we fit within an ecosystem of tools and resources…
Our position is we want our customers and our users preferably to use two-factor authentication and to avail themselves of everything that we can offer to stay safe.
We think that’s a really important balance there, too, to add to that.
Back in the day, back in the day.
They do rely on their ability to be able to safely communicate what they’re doing pseudonymously.
We believe in the right of people to have anonymous accounts on Twitter. We believe that it’s critically important for human rights activists and social sector organizations. Also, I think one of the things we’ve learned since we joined Twitter was that an overwhelming majority of people who do really ...
When we know that people increasingly expect to understand or to be able to authenticate what it is that they’re seeing. We want to achieve that, while honoring a very closely-held commitment we have, which is that we believe in pseudonymity.
You’ve seen the progress that we’ve made with timeline. There was a time when you, years ago, if one joined Twitter, that it was just chronological, or that, and reverse chronological. As we continue to evolve, we want to take people on the journey with us and widen that commitment ...
Right, exactly. It’s a lot of work. It’s a work in progress, but we think it’s important, again, for transparency reasons. Again, because we want to give customers, consumers, and citizens more choice over what they see in their timelines.
We turned, instead, to those which were internationally credible and trusted sources, used by other credible institutions all over the world. A combination of multilateral UN inputs, as well as some of the most trusted nonprofits in the world that address or think about these issues every day, such as ...
Those definitions are there. Actually, we rely on some important resource groups from the around the world. Unfortunately, actually, there aren’t really any rankings that are developed by academic institutions or larger-scale social groups that produce regularized, periodic reporting around these kinds of issues (in the Asia region).
I think we’re aware of that, Audrey. We can tell. It’s far too entertaining, anyway.
It’s a broader…
The state-controlled media ads policy would potentially, by virtue of its existence, impact other forms of advertising, such as during an election. That policy is with regards to, in particular, state-controlled media themselves.
That’s a more recent policy, and it’s not exactly the same thing.
That makes sense and aligns with our commitments. You may have heard and seen our announcements around ads transparency centers. It takes the same principle and the same model and seeks to provide similar levels of information that can be accessed by anyone.
I wanted to ask a question about, in light of this discussion, how you’re looking at or any concerns or projects you have related to the upcoming election.
Thank you.
We look forward to hearing more about this going forward. Just to clarify, the five winners, will they be supported to expand their work going forward?
It’s right there. It’s right there.
Thank you for sharing that. Do you have a timeline or plans that you’re rolling out?
I’m going to make you late for your cabinet meeting, I think.
No, not right now.
May I ask your perspective, then? With that perspective in mind, can I ask what your thoughts are on the evolving work around blockchain, and that at the same that we’re discussing this, we’re also entering into a world where information can also potentially be on the web in perpetuity ...
We welcome Greek. Go for it.
That’s amazing.
We also want the world to know that this is happening. We could, in another scenario, take all of that action and not talk about it, but we don’t think that that’s in the public interest. We don’t think that that’s part of the social contract that we have with ...
Honestly, I think one of the real challenges for us as a company is that yes, there can be individual bad actors. Yes, there can be criminals and criminal syndicates. There can be bad faith disruptors, but some of the biggest challenges we’re facing are actually from state-sponsored or state-based ...
There’s more work to do there, too, we think. You’ll see more in upcoming reports that reflect that, but it is an important commitment for us. Those data disclosures, I think, also reflect…It’s not at first glance that one would pick that up, but it is part of our commitment ...
We, of course, also work with Lumen for posting those government requests. We’re expanding our commitment, so that people can see what requests we get from governments, and they can see what’s happening inside the company with regards to that content.
You may be familiar with the Twitter Transparency Report. That is also something that’s been around for about 12 years. Each new report that we produce approximately every six months is a stronger iteration of the one before it.
We’re also getting very clear about the information that we don’t want to share that’s in violation of the rights of the people who use our service. We want to protect their data. We don’t want to over-disclose. In fact, we continue to expand our work in this particular area.
We think that, by sharing and disclosing data like this, that it’s actually a conduit to stronger privacy commitments to our users. If governments can see, if the public can see, if experts can see what’s happening in this regard, then we’re not only sharing the problem.
It does have a long history of open APIs and a commitment to working more openly. Also, because we do value and treasure the rights of people who use our service. The human rights, but also, their own privacy.
If we lose that trust, then Twitter doesn’t really exist very well in the world. It’s also a real value point for us and to us a company. A lot of people come to Twitter to work for us because one, most of its surfaces are so public, and it ...
We also think that this is part of our journey towards protecting citizens and customers who use Twitter as a service. That goes to your earlier point about privacy. Twitter has expanded its commitments to privacy over the last couple of years.Very, very deeply, in terms of new policy changes ...
Our view is that by starting to share more of what we can and more often, we’re hoping to partner with more people who can give us feedback and tell us what we can learn from what’s happening. Also, how we can continue to partner in innovative ways that yield ...
We need to acknowledge those risks, but also not bury the good and the important, innovative work being done here. In this regard, we’re proud of the process, but actually, we think we have a lot more work to do.
Exactly. I think you have a clearer and more sophisticated understanding than perhaps some people do about the importance of certain kinds of AI and why machine learning can actually be better for all of us.
Honestly, we’re taking down these kinds of accounts every day as a routine part of our work all over the world to ensure that fake accounts aren’t thriving on our platform. Now, bots can actually be quite good and quite healthy. People use travel…
That’s in civil society. It’s in academia. It’s in other parts of government. It’s in other parts of the private sector. What we’re seeking to do is to start sharing on a more consistent basis, but particularly, where we see pronounced efforts and impacts.
It’s getting harder. Bad actors are getting smarter and more sophisticated. Our view is that it’s only with partnerships going forward and some of the smartest people, doing the best work in these areas, are not necessarily inside the companies. They’re (also) outside.
Our commitment is to those customers, those citizens who want reassurances and want to know that it is a safer place to be. Our view is that it’s going to take a lot of collaborative work in order to continue to address these growing and expanding challenges.
