Jack Dorsey just met with Trump to talk about the health of Twitter’s public discourse – By Taylor Hatmaker (Techcrunch) / April 23 2019
Twitter’s co-founder and CEO historically doesn’t have the most discerning tastes when it comes to who he decides to engage with. Fresh off the podcast circuit, today a thoroughly beardy Jack Dorsey sat down with President Trump for his most high-profile tête-à-tête yet.
Unlike his recent amble onto the Joe Rogan show, Dorsey’s 30-minute meeting with Trump happened behind closed doors. Motherboard reported the meeting just before Trump tweeted about it.
Great meeting this afternoon at the @WhiteHouse with @Jack from @Twitter. Lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform, and the world of social media in general. Look forward to keeping an open dialogue! pic.twitter.com/QnZi579eFb
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2019
Unless either of the men decides to share more about what they discussed we won’t know how things went down exactly, though it’s probably easy enough to guess. According to the Motherboard report, the initial internal Twitter email named “the health of the public conversation on Twitter” as the topic of the day.
Given that, we’d guess that Trump probably took the chance to bring up recent unfounded gripes about conservative censorship on the platform while Dorsey likely offered reassurances, active listening and other assorted gestures of noncommittal mildness.
According to the internal memo, Dorsey preemptively defended his decision to accept an invite from Trump. “Some of you will be very supportive of our meeting [with] the president, and some of you might feel we shouldn’t take this meeting at all,” Dorsey wrote in an email. “In the end, I believe it’s important to meet heads of state in order to listen, share our principles and our ideas.”
Update: Dorsey tweeted at Trump thanking him for the conversation. “Twitter is here to serve the entire public conversation, and we intend to make it healthier and more civil,” Dorsey wrote. “Thanks for the discussion about that.” The Washington Post reports Trump complained that the company unjustly “limited or removed some of his followers” in his session with the Twitter CEO. In fact, Trump was just tweeting about that earlier in the day.
“The best thing ever to happen to Twitter is Donald Trump.” @MariaBartiromo So true, but they don’t treat me well as a Republican. Very discriminatory, hard for people to sign on. Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people. Different names-over 100 M…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/23/jack-dorsey-trump-meeting-twitter/
