US President Donald Trump has used a meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to question why he’s losing so many followers on the service.
If you’ve even thought about Twitter in the last few years, you’ll likely have thought about US President Donald Trump as well.
Yes, as one of the most visible US politicians to date, Trump has spent a large amount of his time on the social networking service, using it to update people on national occurrences, criticise his detractors, offend musicians, flaunt copyright, and post ridiculous non sequiturs from time to time.
However, as The Washington Post reports, Trump used a meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to complain about how he has frequently been losing followers on the service.
According to a source present at the meeting – which included Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino – the President used a major portion of his meeting with Dorsey to raise concerns that Twitter had removed followers from his account.
Jack Dorsey responded by noting that any fluctuation in followers is likely due to Twitter’s attempts to remove bot and spam accounts which may use the service, noting they want Trump on the platform, and for him to only be followed by real people.
Thank you for the time. Twitter is here to serve the entire public conversation, and we intend to make it healthier and more civil. Thanks for the discussion about that.
— jack (@jack) April 23, 2019
As The Daily Beast notes, Donald Trump also spent part of this meeting complaining to Jack Dorsey that his predecessor, Barack Obama, has more followers than he does, despite his own admission that he is “so much better at Twitter than Obama is.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Twitter and Trump have gone head-to-head, with the social media platform responding to pleas for the President to be blocked from the service for inflammatory posts.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about political figures and world leaders on Twitter, and we want to share our stance,” Twitter’s 2018 statement began, which never specifically mentioned Trump by name.
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
“We review Tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly,” it continues. “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.”
“We are working to make Twitter the best place to see and freely discuss everything that matters. We believe that’s the best way to help our society make progress.”
Check out Hateiohead’s ‘Tweet’:
