Twitter plans to work more closely with Government officials in a bid to “protect and defend” its 10 million UK users.
The service and its users have come under scrutiny for the role Twitter played in breaking injunctions and as a communications tool during the riots last year, and Twitter says it will respond by employing advocates to push its case in Westminster.
The blogging service’s UK general manager told the BBC that the company was looking to recruit a public policy manager to represent its members in debates, such as whether users should be censured for breaking injunctions online.
Tony Wang said the new recruit would work with “the Government, various ministries, members of parliament as well as law enforcement” to make sure its users were protected from legal action where possible and had a voice in policy discussions.
“There are a number of different needs that [officials] have – and there’s a lot of very unique ways that they’re using Twitter,” he said, speaking as the site announced it had passed the 10m active user milestone in the UK.
According to Twitter, it was increasingly taking a more localised view on policy despite its global ambitions, and planned to have “more people on the ground” in countries outside the US after a widepread recruitment programme.
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