Twitter will award cash to anyone who discovers racism and/or sexism in its algorithm. The prize can reach US$ 3,500, equivalent to almost R$ 18,000.
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The platform made the announcement last Friday (7/30). According to the company, this is “the first bounty competition of its kind in the industry”.
Other social networks also pay for Bugs or errors found. However, the process is not exactly a competition. At this point, Twitter innovates, as it actually encourages the search for flaws in its system.
Mission is to find mistakes
In this case, the “dispute” is based on rewards for errors found. The goal is to find distortions in the platform's machine learning models. This is not an easy task, as the company itself warns.
Twitter executives Rumman Chowdhury and Jutta Williams commented on the action. “Sometimes companies become aware of unwanted ethical violations only after they become public knowledge. We want to change that.”
The proposal should bring together several hackers from around the world interested in the challenge. If they find something in the algorithm that enables or encourages biased actions, they get the reward.
good hackers
It is noteworthy that although the word is usually associated in a negative way, hacking can be beneficial. Many programmers test website codes in order to find various flaws.
When they find something, the company is notified and the solution can be offered. The attitude is not usually well seen by several entrepreneurs. However, through it, information security has gradually evolved.
Big names like Facebook and Google even encourage hackers to test their platforms. This is exactly what twitter is proposing right now.
If the fault is found, in addition to being grateful, the hacker can still take R$ 18,000 into his pocket. The decision was based on the growing social concern with equality and respect.
Even with persistent efforts to curb racist and sexist attitudes, flaws still exist. At this point, it is worth remembering that there is also that malicious hacker. This type of “championship” ends up making criminal attitudes even more difficult in the digital environment.
Another point that encourages action is a study that showed that racism would be present on the platform. Researchers found that the algorithm favored white people and men more.
Last year, PhD student Colin Madland revealed the problem in a tweet. The Zoom video calling platform erased a black man's face when he used a green background.
