Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey revealed plans to establish an independent team to create a standard all social media companies could use to tackle harmful speech and posts, at a time of growing concern over misuse of the platforms.

In a series of tweets, the executive said the company would fund a five-person group to create rules similar to the SMTP protocol for email, with the goal of enabling multiple social media platforms to filter and block specific types of content.

The team will be named Bluesky, which will initially be helmed by Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal.

Dorsey said there is a need for social media to change the way content is handled, noting current set-ups focus too heavily on “conversation that sparks controversy and outrage” instead of messages promoting health.

In Twitter’s case, such an approach would enable it to “access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation”, while also forcing it to be “far more innovative than in the past”.

Source: mobileworldlive.com