Updated: November 12, from IIT Delhi townhall
Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is in India for the first time and he hosted a fire side chat with the students of IIT Delhi, talking about the role of today’s youth in shaping today’s political and social environment. He also made it a point to talk about fighting fake news on the Twitter platform.
This move could also be to ramp up the popularity of the social networking application and widen its reach and visibility amongst the Indian internet users.
Dorsey will be in India for a week’s time. He will likely meet the IT Minister of India, Ravi Shankar Prasad as well.
Earlier in the day he met with Congress president Rahul Gandhi as well.
Dorsey’s fireside chat with Maya Hari, Vice President, APAC at Twitter revolved around how to tackle fake news. He said Twitter’s job was to ensure that fake news does not get spread, but there are multiple fixes to the issue.
He also referred to engineers, like Dorsey not threatened by the emergence of artificial intelligence but every other job profile might not be that lucky. He also pointed out that college aspirants should seek their career options depending on their interests, which something Dorsey did himself after dropping out of college.
He also said that Twitter increased its character limit from 160 characters to 240 so that more messages could be shared.
Dorsey was speaking of #Powerof18 - which is the hashtag symbolising the voting age in India (18 years). He said youth needs to lend a voice to the country’s democratic process. He said Twitter is a platform that helps people exercise their right in a democracy (India is the world’s largest democracy).
Dorsey was asked why Twitter does not have an edit button. Here’s the reason.
The reason Twitter does not have an ‘edit’ button is because people may change their opinions by editing the original tweet and then people who don’t agree with the original view, may have already retweeted the tweet, which is not an accurate representation of what they believe.
Earlier Dorsey tweeted letting his followers know that he is visiting India.
After coming to India, the first stop in his itinerary led straight to the Buddhist spiritual leader, Dalai Lama whom he talked to and hailed as “an amazing teacher”. Talk about a divine calling.
It could also be that the company is looking to recruit a management body in India since Twitter hasn't been able to generate substantial advertising sales growth in a market that’s thriving with smartphone and cheap internet data plans.
There are also chances that Dorsey might meet Ravi Shankar Prasad to discuss matters on curbing malicious content on the platform.
He wants to ensure that there is no misuse of the platform by any "foreign" elements during the upcoming general elections, which are scheduled to happen next year.
Dorsey also visited Jaipur where he posted a picture on Twitter. Seems the getting his fair share of exploring cultures and cities.
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