Ms Karen White:

During the summer, we launched the Twitter global ads transparency center. That is available to any member of the public or user on Twitter. The objective is further transparency in the advertising process so that one can see what particular advertisements are running from a particular account. If I searched for the Deputy's account, I could see whether he had run any advertisements over the past seven days. Promoted advertisements on the platform take the form of promoted tweets, accounts and trends. They are the three types of promoted products that we have. As with organic content, our objective is to show the most relevant content. Businesses and charities come to Twitter with the objective of amplifying their message. The global ads transparency center was the first iteration and there will be further development on it in 2019.

With regard to the matter of bots, we welcome the many discussions that have taken place relating to definitions. I acknowledge that it is difficult to find a definition for bots. Academics and researchers have also struggled to find a definition. We had concerns relating to the definition of "to a political end". We have seen bots being used for positive reasons during major elections. In Brazil, as the Deputy highlighted and as I pointed out in my written statement, my colleagues worked with the Brazilian electoral court on a direct message chat bot. There are many positive use cases. In advance of the European elections, we would hope that we can advance more of these types of services. We seek clarification as to whether something such as that would fall foul of the Bill or would be allowed.