Twitter makes it easy to harass, abuse others: Jack Dorsey

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted the micro-blogging site serves an easy platform for abuse and harassment. Dorsey also highlighted Twitter is relying on ML to curb abuse and spam on the platform.

FILE PHOTO: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addresses students during a town hall at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India, November 12, 2018. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis (REUTERS)

Admitting that Twitter makes it "super easy to harass and abuse others", CEO of the micro-blogging platform Jack Dorsey has said that addressing the issue in a systematic way is his biggest worry.

The platform is relying more on Machine Learning (ML) to identify abusive tweets as opposed to having people individually report them, Dorsey said in his TED talk this week, Business Insider reported.

"We have seen abuse, we have seen harassment, we have seen manipulation, automation, human coordination, misinformation," Dorsey was quoted as saying.

"These are dynamics that we were not expecting 13 years ago."

Dorsey also lamented that the system places undue weight on followers and likes.

"Right now the system makes it super easy to harass and abuse others," he said, while adding that Twitter has created a "pretty terrible situation" for women.

As part of the efforts to make its platform appear less toxic, Twitter this week also announced that it is planning to give people an option to hide replies to their tweets, thereby giving users more control over the nature of conversation they would like to have on the platform.

"Starting in June, we'll be experimenting with ways to give people more control over their conversations by giving them an option to hide replies to their Tweets," Donald Hicks, Vice President, Twitter Service and David Gasca, Twitter's Senior Director, Product Management, Health, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

While the feature has the potential to make trolls invisible, it could make it difficult for users to correct wrong statements made by others.

Other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram already give users much more power in terms of dealing with the comments to their posts, including the option to delete them.

Twitter last year said that making the platform free of abuse, spam and other things that distract from the public conversation is its top priority.