Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Reacts To Donald Trump’s Threat To Shut Down Social Media

May 27, 2020 by Demi Lobo in Politics with 0 Comments

Donald Trump, Jack Dorsey

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Reacts To Donald Trump’s Threat To Shut Down Social Media

Update #2 (May 28th): Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, has responded to President Donald Trump’s threat to close social media. Donald Trump sent out the warning after Twitter announced users would have the option to fact-check his tweets.

Jack Dorsey hopped on Twitter to defend the social media brand’s decision.

“Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.”

He continued,

“This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth.’ Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information to dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.”

He ended with,

“Per our Civic Integrity policy… the tweets yesterday may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot (only registered voters receive ballots). We’re updating the link on #realDonaldTrump’s tweet to make this more clear.”

Original Story: Donald Trump is threatening to “strongly regulate” or even shut down social media platforms after Twitter created a label that allows users to fact-check some of his tweets, for the first time.

In a tweet posted Wednesday (May 27th), Donald Trump accused social media platforms of interfering in the 2016 election.

“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

He then addressed his feelings on how mail-in ballots would cause extreme voter fraud, cheating, and forgery in the upcoming election,

“We can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country,” Trump tweeted. “It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”

Twitter doesn’t not feel like Donald Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting, violate the company’s rules because his tweets do not discourage people from voting. But, Twitter added the label to simply to give context surrounding Donald Trump’s claims. Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough said in a statement email, according to CNN Business,

“These Tweets (here and here) contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots…This decision is in line with the approach we shared earlier this month.”

These are the tweets in question, with the new label option,

This will be the first time Twitter has ever considered Donald Trump’s tweet as potentially misleading.

Donald Trump is frequently on social media and earlier this month, an alleged ad was circulating online that manipulating audio from rapper T.I.‘s hit 2008 song, “Whatever You Like,” to slam democratic candidate, Joe Biden. The audio states: