San Francisco (AFP)

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey wants to fight misinformation by changing the rules of the game and the algorithms of social networks to encourage more balanced conversations, less irritated.

He announced Tuesday the formation of a small independent team called "Bluesky" ("blue sky"), consisting of five engineers responsible for designing this new protocol, that is to say a set of computer rules that will govern the way whose data and information are exchanged on potential partner networks.

The co-founder of one of the most iconic platforms in the world lists the problems facing networks today, such as the detection and removal of problematic texts and images, or the attention of users too often directed to "conversations that provoke indignation more than those who inform ".

To remedy this, he is considering an open-source, open-source protocol, as opposed to closed platforms managed by a single organization.

"Centralized solutions are struggling to meet the new challenges we face," says Jack Dorsey on Twitter. "For example, centralized struggle against misuse and misleading information is unlikely to be effective on a large scale in the long run unless people are too busy."

According to him the value of social networks is more and more the "algorithms that can direct the attention of people", rather than the hosting and removal of content. "Unfortunately, these algorithms belong (to companies) and we can not build alternatives for now."

He acknowledges that "many years" will be needed to bring out "a decentralized standard protocol for social networks that is robust and usable on a large scale and opens the way to resolving these challenges".

Twitter is committed to fund the initial team of five engineers and IT developers, one day, to be a customer of this protocol.

© 2019 AFP