Many people don't trust us: Twitter CEO

New Delhi: A day after the Centre released regulations for social media and over-the-top (OTT) platforms making it mandatory for Twitter and WhatsApp to identify the source of a post deemed anti-national by authorities, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the microblogging platform is lacking in transparency and it has been evident in the last few years. "… We agree many people don't trust us. Never has this been more pronounced than the last few years… And we aren't alone: every institution is experiencing a significant trust deficit," he told the analysts.

Twitter ran into trouble in India following Republic Day violence than unfolded in the national Capital when farmers took out a tractor rally protesting three agriculture laws. The government flagged several Twitter accounts tweeting with hashtags 'farmer genocide', asking the platform to take action against them. Twitter took a series of staggered actions, but some accounts were restored after being briefly suspended, and Twitter defended its action citing its policy of freedom of expression.

The new guidelines, released by the IT ministry, require social media intermediaries to appoint a resident grievance officer, who shall register complaints in 24 hours, and file monthly compliance reports. User grievances have to be resolved within 15 days.

The new rules take effect immediately, though significant social-media providers (based on the number of users) will get three months before they need to start complying.

CEO Dorsey on Friday said Twitter intends to make its content moderation practices more transparent, give people more control to moderate their interactions, enable a marketplace approach to relevance algorithms, and fund an open-source social media standard. Focus on metrics like transparency, accountability, reliability and choice will have a huge impact, he said.

As part of its series of reform measures, the microblogging platform is planning to introduce a way for users to automatically block and mute abusive accounts.