Trump Demands Congress Curb Twitter Policies He Calls ‘Discriminatory
Donald Trump said Congress should "get involved" in a battle against "discriminatory" practices by Twitter Inc. that the president has alleged unfairly target conservatives.
In a series of tweets, Trump said it was "so true" that he was the best thing to happen to the social media platform, but that Twitter doesn’t "treat me well as a Republican."
"Very discriminatory, hard for people to sign on," Trump wrote. "Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people."
The president went on to complain that his follower count would be "much higher" if Twitter "wasn’t playing their political games."
"No wonder Congress wants to get involved - and they should," he continued.
As of Tuesday morning, Trump had 59.9 million Twitter followers, making him the 13th most-tracked user on the social media network behind individuals including former President Barack Obama and singers Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. But the president has repeatedly voiced his displeasure with an effort by Twitter last year to remove tens of millions of suspicious accounts, with the company saying it was looking to help combat manipulative and abusive content by deleting fake profiles.
The president lost hundreds of thousands of followers in the purge, but so did many of the company’s most-visible users - including company Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, who said he lost around 200,000 followers as part of the initiative.Dorsey told lawmakers in September that the company wasn’t biased and that there were technical explanations for each example that Republicans had raised to press their case of political bias. And Twitter said Tuesday that some 38 percent of abusive content is now being found through technology and flagged for human review, up from none last year.
“We are taking a more proactive approach to reducing abuse and its effects on Twitter,” Dorsey said Tuesday in a statement. “We are reducing the burden on victims and, where possible, taking action before abuse is reported."
Twitter shares surged Tuesday morning when the company reported that it had topped first-quarter sales projections and increased its number of daily active users to 134 million, topping analyst predictions for about 128.4 million. That’s an increase from 126 million in the fourth quarter.Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, produces TicToc, a global breaking news service for Twitter.
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