To fix itself, Twitter wants to measure 'conversational health'

Jack Dorsey is earnestly looking for answers.

In a tweetstorm on Thursday, the Twitter CEO said his company is searching for ways to root out trolling, bullying, hate speech, and political manipulation on the network. And in order to do that, Twitter wants to better understand the nature, or "health," of conversations on its platform.

Through Dorsey's Tweets, the company has put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for "Twitter Health Metrics."

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The RFP specifically asks organizations to submit ways to measure "conversational health." It says that the nonprofit research organization Cortico introduced the idea and has its own suggestions for measuring conversation on Twitter. But Twitter is casting a wider net, seeking "proposed health metrics, and methods for capturing, measuring, evaluating and reporting on such metrics." The organization that wins the bid will have access to Twitter's data, and will be expected to put out research, products, and suggestions for how to foster healthy dialogue on the platform.

"If you want to improve something, you have to be able to measure it," Dorsey tweeted.

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Dorsey said the approach Twitter had been taking against abuse was reactive, instead of proactive. He explained the plan to first measure, then diagnose the problems on Twitter by comparing it to how doctors approach health in the human body.

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Dorsey also showed contrition for Twitter's failure to predict and guard against how nefarious or abusive users were able to manipulate the network. Twitter has faced harsh criticism from congress for its role in amplifying the voices of Russian bots and troll accounts working to inflame American politics and culture, and influence the 2016 presidential election.

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Facebook's Head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri, expressed some shade-tinged appreciation for the initiative on Twitter.

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Facebook, in fact, has its own version of the initiative, which it is characterizing as "time well spent" and "meaningful interactions." Also in response to how Facebook had become a tool of trolls and divisive politics, Mark Zuckerberg touted his company's new emphasis on interpersonal substance over news and business presence in a Facebook post. However, Mosseri said at Recode's Code Media conference in February that Facebook is still working on exactly how they classify meaningful conversations.

"The metric is definitely evolving," Mosseri said at the time.

Proposals for Twitter's healthy conversations initiative are due April 13.