Twitter’s asking for help on how to be less toxic

Twitter on Thursday announced plans to take a more critical look at its dark side and asked for outside help to develop ways that it can raise the tone of online conversation.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, in a series of tweets, said that the company is starting to look at the problems on its network differently. Rather than simply looking at how it can effectively take down troubling content, he said the company will also now begin looking at how it can encourage and foster better conversation in the first place.

“We’ve focused most of our efforts on removing content against our terms, instead of building a systemic framework to help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking,” Dorsey said. “This is the approach we now need.”

Twitter has struggled for years with balancing what some critics say is an idealistic commitment to free expression with the reality that its fast-moving, public network also amplifies hateful, false and sometimes violent ideas. That criticism has only intensified as the network’s influence has grown. Twitter, along with Google and Facebook, was also questioned by Congress over the companies’ role in Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Twitter has announced several policy changes aimed at limiting hate speech on its network - but many have criticized what they see as inconsistent implementation of those policies. For example, the company in February removed thousands of accounts under the suspicion that they were bots or had otherwise violated its policies, but political conservatives said they had been unfairly targeted in the purge.

Thursday’s announcement did not specify any changes to Twitter’s existing policies. It also did not include any new measures that immediately affect users. Instead, it signals that Twitter is willing to take a more critical and realistic look at its long-standing issues.

“We love instant, public, global messaging and conversation,” Dorsey said. “It’s what Twitter is and it’s why we’re here. But we didn’t fully predict or understand the real-world negative consequences. We acknowledge that now, and are determined to find holistic and fair solutions.”

Before it can improve its conversational health, the company is first asking for help getting a diagnosis. Twitter issued an open call for proposals to devise a system through which it can evaluate the “conversational health” of its network.

Dorsey said Twitter would like to create a framework to measure the tone of online conversations, inspired by the work from two groups tied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s me- dia lab - the nonprofit Cortico and an MIT research group called Social Machines that also has existing ties to Twitter.

Dorsey in his tweet said that Twitter would like to come up with a framework that particularly suits Twitter’s network. The firm reported it roughly 330 million peoplewho use its site regularly in its latest earnings report.

He also acknowledged that the company hasmade missteps in the past in dealing with these issues.

“We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough,” Dorsey said. “While working to fix it, we’ve been accused of apathy, censorship, political bias, and optimizing for our business and share price instead of the concerns of society. This is not whowe are, or whowe ever want to be.”

Twitter will accept proposals until April 13; it expects to announce the first selected projects in July.