Twitter more than exceeded expectations in its Q1 earnings report on Wednesday morning, clocking another profitable quarter and recording an additional six million monthly active users. In a nod to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal—and, possibly, the pressure he’s already faced since Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress—Jack Dorsey fielded questions about Twitter’s new privacy policy and data privacy during its earnings call.
Dorsey said Twitter felt “really good” about its data business, which he insisted was “a little bit different” from that of its peers because Twitter is a public forum.
“We organize the public information so that people can gain insights from them,” he continued. “Normally, this is used for brands, sentiment analysis for citizen services, governments—local governments in particular—and researchers. We have a ‘know your customer’ policy, so we do extensive research in terms of who is our customer around the data. But again a lot of the data is in the public, and we do not sell any personally identifiable data.”
It was a reminder that, lest you forget, most of your Twitter activity is already out there for people to see. “We will continue to hold ourselves publicly accountable to make sure we fulfill the fundamental right of privacy,” Dorsey said.
Perhaps that might eventually include a personal appearance in front of Congress.
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