Twitter has announced that it wants to begin an initiative that will improve its Machine Learning algorithms. The company shared this with the public on Wednesday, 14 April 2021 in a blog post. It wants to take responsibility for its own algorithmic choices after many arguments about what its algorithm chose to display.
Twitter says, “We’re conducting in-depth analysis and studies to assess the existence of potential harms in the algorithms we use”. In the upcoming months, it plans to allow users to access these types of information;
- A gender and racial bias analysis of Twitter’s image cropping algorithm;
- A fair assessment of the Home timeline recommendations across racial subgroups;
- An analysis of content recommendations for different political ideologies across seven countries.
The company has said that it wants to understand the effects the algorithm can have over time. “When Twitter uses ML, it can impact hundreds of millions of Tweets per day and sometimes, the way a system was designed to help could start to behave differently than was intended. These subtle shifts can then start to impact the people using Twitter and we want to make sure we’re studying those changes and using them to build a better product.”
Last month, it (Twitter) tried to improve how users can share and view media. When you Tweet a single image, it will appear in the Tweet composer exactly the way it will look on the timeline.
It is yet to be confirmed how much impact the discovery will have. However, the company is certain this won’t always translate into visible changes in the product. Instead, it will lead to heightened awareness and important discussions about how Twitter uses machine learning.
The decision of Twitter to inspect its algorithms for bias follows other social sites like Facebook, which formed similar teams in 2020. There’s also an ongoing persuasion from lawmakers to keep companies’ algorithmic bias under control.
This initiative of exploring “algorithmic choice,” will allow users to have control as to what content is suggested to them. The company is open to reply any questions concerning this work, using the hashtag #AskTwitterMETA.
