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Huffington Post reporter says Twitter CEO 'waffled' when asked if Trump would be banned over a 'call for murder'
January 18, 2019
Reporter wasn't happy with the answer to her ridiculous hypothetical question
The Huffington Post claims that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey "waffled" when asked whether or not the platform would ban President Donald Trump over a "call for murder."
How did the conversation go?
Feinberg asked Dorsey about Twitter's policy on political misinformation.
"I know Twitter just introduced a new tool for political ad transparency in India, but there's still sort of this question of what Twitter will do if politicians actively misuse the platform," she asked. "Has that ever happened where a politician has been removed, and does Twitter have any plans for what to do if that happens?"
"Um, I don't know about the cases. We can ... we can figure that out for you. But yeah, I mean, we're preparing for the Indian elections. It's going to be the biggest democratic election in the world," Dorsey answered. " And Twitter is heavily used by the influencers and the politicians and the government in India, so we're very fortunate in that degree. And we want to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that we maintain the integrity of the conversation around the election."
Then she asked what Twitter does when politicians are promoting misinformation and he replied, "We take action."
This is where it started getting weird.
"So then is there anything that, say, Donald Trump could do that would qualify as a misuse? Because I know the newsworthy aspect of it outweighs a lot of that. But is there anything that he could do that would qualify as misusing the platform, regardless of newsworthiness?" Feinberg asked.
"Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this a lot, so I'm not going to rehash it. We believe it's important that the world sees how global leaders think and how they act. And we think the conversation that ensues around that is critical," Dorsey told Feinberg.
"OK, but if Trump tweeted out asking each of his followers to murder one journalist, would you remove him?" Feinberg pressed.
"That would be a violent threat. We'd definitely … You know we're in constant communication with all governments around the world. So we'd certainly talk about it," Dorsey responded.
Feinberg continued, ".. if he did that, would that be grounds to ... "
"I'm not going to talk about particulars. We've established protocol, it's transparent. It's out there for everyone to read," Dorsey shut her down. "We have, independent of the U.S. president, we have conversations with all governments. It's not just limited to this one."
What else?
Some news outlets have accused Trump of violating Twitter's policies with tweets such as one in September 2017 about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, also known as "Little Rocket Man."
Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017
The president has 57.2 million Twitter followers.
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