Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said his team was preparing for the Lok Sabha elections and that they wanted to ensure that the “integrity of the conversation around the election” was maintained, reported Huffington Post.
On January 10, Twitter had announced that it will provide an advertising dashboard that will show expenditures by political parties in India on the platform during the course of the election. Twitter Global Vice President (Public Policy) Colin Crowell said the tool – Ads Transparency Centre – will be available over the next few weeks as the company is working on finer details of the features.
“It’s [the Lok Sabha elections] going to be the biggest democratic election in the world,” Dorsey said when asked about Twitter’s new tool for political ad transparency in India. “And Twitter is heavily used by the influencers and the politicians and the government in India, so we’re very fortunate in that degree. And we want to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that we maintain the integrity of the conversation around the election.”
To a question on what would be done if politicians promote misinformation, Dorsey said: “We take action.”
Dorsey also addressed the controversy surrounding a poster that read “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” which he was seen posing with in a photo during a trip to India. Responding to a question on people viewing it as “institutional ignorance” or that of Twitter not understanding its responsibility, Dorsey said Twitter was “always learning more about our responsibility in the world”.
“But that particular case where I was given a poster and then someone immediately said, ‘Let’s take a picture’,” he said. Twitter had apologised immediately after the photo faced backlash, dissociating itself from the poster.
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