Twitter says it won’t bar world leaders from platform
It made no mention of his name, but Twitter appears to have offered an explanation for refusing to ban President Trump despite protest from some users of the social media service.
In a short blog post Friday, the company said blocking a world leader would undermine its role as a service advancing what it called a “public conversation.”
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter said. “It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
Twitter has been under pressure to rein in Trump, who has been accused of inciting violence and raising nuclear tensions with North Korea using his favorite mode of communication. Many critics said they believed Trump’s recent posts violated Twitter’s terms of service, which prohibit messages that threaten violence, death or physical harm.
On Tuesday, the president tweeted that he had a much bigger and more powerful nuclear button than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, raising more fears that Trump could plunge the nation into war.
After the tweet, protesters directed their scorn at Twitter and its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, by projecting an image onto the company’s San Francisco headquarters that read, “@jack is #complicit.”
The company initially responded to the criticism last week by saying Trump had not violated its terms of service, before making its broader comments about world leaders Friday.
It’s unclear why Twitter did not mention Trump by name in the post. The company declined to comment.
Critics have speculated that Twitter, which has struggled on Wall Street because of lagging user growth, has chosen not to remove Trump because his presence makes the service perpetually newsworthy, capturing the attention of users and with them advertising revenue.
To that end, Twitter appeared to address that speculation in its post: “No one person’s account drives Twitter’s growth, or influences these decisions. We work hard to remain unbiased with the public interest in mind.”