In a series of tweets yesterday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the social network would be enlisting the help of outside experts to measure its health. Twitter needs help, admitted Dorsey—who is now inviting experts to apply for funding to study its health metrics and potential solutions to these issues.
We're committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.
The request for proposals comes after more than a year of heightened scrutiny over Twitter—as well as its other social media and online counterparts like Facebook and Google - for the alleged weaponization of the platform and its influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Twitter is the first social network to actively request the public's help in identifying solutions to these ongoing issues. While results indicate that Facebook overwhelmingly instills the most negative sentiment, Twitter is directly behind it.
Dorsey's announcement and the studies referenced further showcase the problems faced by today's social platforms. When user experiences which are developed to facilitate short-term, dopamine driven behavior become ubiquitous and proliferate through our lives—we as consumers become apathetic in a sea of sensationalism.
When everything is marked important, nothing is perceived as such.
Read More: If You Think Twitter Is Unhealthy, You Can Now Apply To Study It