‘2019 Lok Sabha polls is critical because India is important to us’
By his own admission, Colin Crowell, Twitter vice-president for global public policy and philanthropy, is a technology optimist. “My optimism about the use of technology has to be tempered at times by the reality that not everybody who comes to an open public platform comes with noble intentions. So you must have a strategy to deal with the flip side in a way that is smart and effective,” he says. In an interview, to Vidhi Choudhary, Crowell spoke about the parliamentary committee meeting, allegations of a perceived political bias and the recent attack on journalist Barkha Dutt. Edited excerpts:
How was the meeting with the parliamentary committee?
It was a respectful enquiry around issues that would be natural for a panel to enquire about, particularly when you take into account the looming election here. It’s similar to the enquiries we get from other countries on the cusp of major national elections. Lok Sabha 2019 is critically important to us because India is so important... we have a crossfunctional team spun up internally to work on site integrity issues to make sure we’re alive to any concerns with coordinated manipulation or interference.
Please tell us about the election group that will lead electoral integrity work in India.
The team is globally distributed and certainly we will have a presence in India to have a liaison-like function with the EC. We also have people in India to facilitate verification of accounts. Issues of site integrity like looking for evidence of bot networks, online manipulation and foreign interference will be done at a global level.
How do you respond to allegations of a perceived political bias on Twitter?
We are so unbiased that we don’t even categorise users on the basis of political beliefs. We don’t break down conversations that way because we don’t monitor it. Any assertion that Twitter factors in political beliefs or viewpoints in developing or enforcing our rules is false. We believe in impartiality. Our mission is to serve public conversation, which needs to have all voices and perspectives present in order for it to be vibrant and valuable to every user.
Earlier this month, Barkha Dutt criticised Twitter for allegedly failing to act against the gendered harassment she faced on
it. Please comment.
We respect the voices of those who use our service to hold power to account and to draw attention to societal issues, including the rights of women. However, posting private information on Twitter is a violation of Twitter rules. We do not consider public information that is already widely available in the public domain as private. For example, if information was previously posted on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter (e.g. someone lists their personal phone number on their public blog), it may not be a violation of this policy. We cannot take action on abuse that occurs on other services but we encourage account holders to report, block, and mute accounts that are harming their experience on Twitter.
Are political parties in India abusing platforms like Twitter? How would you tackle this?
We don’t focus on who is tweeting but on the conduct of tweeting. The origin of that conduct is immaterial to us.
What are the insights you’ve gained from polls around the world that might help India?
One of the things we learnt in both Mexico and Brazil is how important it is to work with national election commissions because they are trusted sources of poll-related information. We’re certainly taking that lesson here to India as well through the work we are doing with the EC. Over time, we have learnt the importance of verifying accounts of major party candidates and political parties because that is a hedge against impersonation. In the 2016 US poll retrospectively, we had a probe that yielded proof of Russian interference. We are certainly bringing those insights to India to make sure our site integrity team that has identified these networks in the past elsewhere is also alive to any consideration that might happen here. We have not seen such proof as yet.