Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 October 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Online Harassment and Harmful Communications: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Ronan Costello:

To build on what Mr. Ó Broin said about what our business models rely on or how they are structured, Twitter's model is that users express themselves on the platform through tweets. Tweets are the lifeblood of the platform. Users' comfort in expressing themselves on the platform is dependent on them feeling safe and their feeling safe on the platform is dependent on them having confidence that Twitter will be responsive to issues they report to us and that we will be proactive, where necessary, in leveraging machine learning and so on to surface content for review proactively. If people stop tweeting because they do not feel comfortable expressing themselves on the platform, the lifeblood of the platform is extinguished. There is therefore no reason for people to be on it or for advertisers to use it.

The very model of the platform is dependent on them having the trust and confidence in us to invest in safety.

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