Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Donald Trump's tweets are good and he should keep posting them

There have been numerous calls for the site to shut down the President's account, for the sake of global stability

Andrew Griffin
Friday 12 May 2017 05:30 EDT
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President Donald Trump is seen through a window speaking on the phone with King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, in the Oval Office of the White House
President Donald Trump is seen through a window speaking on the phone with King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, in the Oval Office of the White House (Getty)

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Donald Trump's tweets are good for the world and he should be allowed to keep sending them, according to Twitter.

The company's CEO, Jack Dorsey, has responded to repeated calls for his social network to remove the President's account. Critics argue that he is using his huge following to bully his opponents and promote untruths, and that as a result he should be shut down like any other account would.

Mr Dorsey said that in fact having Mr Trump's tweets out in the open help keep people informed and that without them the public would know a lot less about their leaders.

The President has used his Twitter account to threaten his opponents and promote apparently false stories including his belief that he was wiretapped. It has also been suggested that the account undermines global stability by apparently provoking war with North Korea.

Mr Dorsey said stopping Mr Trump from doing that wouldn't be "good for anyone".

“I believe it's really important to hear directly from our leadership," he said on a US TV interview. "And I believe it's really important to hold them accountable. And I believe it's really important to have these conversations out in the open, rather than have them behind closed doors.

"So if we're all to suddenly take these platforms away, where does it go? What happens? It goes in the dark. And I just don't think that's good for anyone.”

Mr Dorsey made a similar suggestion in December, before Mr Trump became president, when he suggested more vaguely that it was useful to see Donald Trump's thoughts in real time.

“The complicated part,” Mr Dorsey said, “is just what does this mean to have a direct line to how he’s thinking in real time and to see that. ... So we’re definitely entering a new world where everything is on the surface and we can all see it in real time and we can all have conversations about it.”

Mr Trump's tweets have reportedly help drive interest in the use of Twitter. The company said last month that it had noticed an increase in accounts that had previously become dormant being picked up again and used to follow political news in the US.

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