Twitter CEO Wants App Store For Social Media Algorithms, Give Users More Choice

Our social media feed is a reflection of who we truly are, or so we'd like to think. More often than not, it's the reflection of different social media platforms' algorithm prowess.

Reuters

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The content we see is somewhat in our control (depending on people we¡¯ve selected to follow and trends we want to keep ourselves up to date with), however, there's always an algorithm that's trying to learn our social media usage pattern and feed us more of what we like and less of what we hate.

But it looks like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wants to change that, by giving the command in our hands -- the hands of the users.

An app store for social media algorithms

Jack Dorsey, on a call with Twitter¡¯s investors, shed light on his vision of developing a decentralised social media network and how they could execute it -- and the need for one today. He suggested creating a social media platform where users could pick out their favourite algorithm from an ¡®app store¡¯ of sorts -- similar to picking a preferred application.

In his vision, he believes that Twitter will definitely benefit by having access to this larger corpus of conversations to offer a more relevant set of content to its users.

Dorsey said in a statement, ¡°The most important thing to focus on, in terms of decentralizing social media, is that it creates a much larger corpus of conversation. The problem of discovery around content is one that is easiest when it is centralized and that¡¯s how we¡¯ve operated for the past 15 years, and even that has some potential to shift."

Encouraging more users to join social media

He added, ¡°One of the things we brought up last year, to address some of the problems facing Section 230 (of US¡¯ Communications Decency Act), is giving people more choice about what ranking algorithms they¡¯re using. You can imagine a more marketplace approach to algorithms, and that¡¯s something that we can not only host but also participate in."

Reuters

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He believes that this will enable Twitter to be a stronger product that people will be more attracted to and help out the business while enabling more people to take interest in participating in social media.

Twitter CEO's comments come at a time where there's growing debate about the role of censorship and free speech, users rights and privileges versus end user agreements, and big platforms becoming the gatekeepers of information. Here in India, Twitter has run afoul with the Indian government by exercising its own set of rules in alleged violation of Indian law.

What do you think about a decentralised social media platform? Do you think it¡¯ll be something that would make things better online? Tell us in the comments below.