Roughly two months after Mark Zuckerberg made it his New Year’s resolution to “fix” the Facebook ( FB) platform in 2018, Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey says he is open to ideas on how to fix Twitter as well.
On his personal Twitter account, Dorsey says on Thursday that bots, trolls and other manipulators have taken advantage of Twitter’s vulnerabilities and abused the platform.
[See: 7 of the Best Tech Stocks to Buy for 2018.]
“We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress,” Dorsey says. “We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns and increasingly divisive echo chambers.”
Twitter launched a campaign to remove content and users that violate the company’s terms of service, but Dorsey says the efforts have resulted in accusations of censorship, political bias and self-interest.
Just one month after Twitter purged 1 million fake accounts from its platform in January, some politically conservative users lashed out at Twitter after another round of account lockouts significantly reduced some users’ follower counts.
Dorsey says on Thursday that Twitter is open to outside proposals about how to improve the platform and would provide “meaningful funding” to research potentially helpful solutions.
Twitter and Facebook are being proactive about improving their platforms after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals last month and accused them of using a “troll farm” to spread political propaganda on social media via fake accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Despite public criticism of both Twitter’s initial inaction and its recent response, GBH Insights head of technology research Daniel Ives says Twitter’s business is showing signs of life in 2018.
[See: Which Companies Spend the Most on Lobbyists?]
“Overall, while clear execution/competitive challenges remain for Twitter in 2018 with the [COO Anthony] Noto departure not helping matters, recent fourth-quarter results/guidance and positive checks thus far in [the first quarter] is another step in the right direction for the company as it appears some organic growth initiatives, secular tailwinds, cost controls, and stabilization trends in monthly active users are slowly changing the narrative of the Twitter story.”
GBH has an “attractive” rating and $38 price target for TWTR stock.
More from U.S. News
Artificial Intelligence Stocks: 10 Companies Betting on AI
7 Ways to Tell if a Stock Is a Good Price
7 Things That Happened When Donald Trump Met With Tech Leaders
Twitter Inc (TWTR) Asks For Help in Fixing Its Platform originally appeared on usnews.com
