Parag Agarwal: Reluctant tweeter who became youngest tech CEO ever at 37

Parag Agrawal, 37, has become the youngest CEO to lead a large technology firm, but little is known about the new head of Twitter.

The Chief Technology Officer of Twitter since 2017, Agrawal has been a reluctant tweeter himself, and has headed some of the microblogging platform's most ambitious projects over the years. Besides this, little is known of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay alumnus.

"Congratulations to our alumnus Dr. Parag Agrawal for being appointed the new CEO of Twitter. Dr. Agrawal obtained his B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2005. He started working at Twitter in 2011 & became the CTO in 2017," the official Twitter handle of IIT-B tweeted on Tuesday.

Analysts have for long questioned Twitter's monetisation strategy and the way it plans to curb misinformation and allegations of political bias on the platform.

While Twitter has been trying to build products like ticketed Spaces over the past year, there is scope to do a lot more compared to larger rivals like Facebook, which recently rebranded to Meta.

In addition, Agrawal will also have to work hard on the issue of misinformation.

In a podcast last year with the MIT  Technology Review "EmTech Stage: Twitter's CTO on Misinformation," Agrawal spoke about several issues plaguing the microblogging platform.

In response to the question what constitutes misinformation, Agrawal said: "I think that's the existential question of our times. Defining misinformation is really, really hard. As we learn through time, our understanding of truth also evolves. We attempt to not adjudicate truth, we focus on potential for harm. And when we say we lean on credible sources, we also lean on all the conversation on the platform that also gets to talk about these credible sources and points out potential gaps as a result of which the credible sources also evolve their thinking or what they talk about...We focus way more on potential for harm as a result of certain content being amplified on the platform without appropriate context."

Earlier this year, Twitter and the Indian government faced off on several issues, from content to regulatory. Twitter taking ex-US President Donald Trump was also an action that did not go down well with many political leaders across the world, and also in India.

Explaining Twitter's policy on public figures, and whether it was different from the platform's policy for other users, Agrawal said during the podcast: "We do have a policy around public content in the public interest, it's in our policy framework. So, yes, we do apply different standards. And this is based on the understanding and the knowledge that there's certain content from elected officials that is important for the public to see and hear. And that all of the content on Twitter is not only on Twitter. It is in newsrooms, it is in press conferences, but oftentimes the source content is on Twitter. The public interest policy exists to make sure that the source content is accessible. We do however flag very clearly for everyone around when such content violates any of our policies. We take the bold move to flag it, label it so that people have the appropriate context that this is indeed an example of a violation, so people can look at that content in light of that understanding."

He has reportedly headed some of Twitter’s more ambitious bets, like Project Bluesky, the firm’s decentralized social networking efforts. He was also Twitter’s first distinguished researcher.