Twitter's stance on not banning Trump is BS
I love Twitter, I think it’s a great platform, but the company’s recent post titled, “World Leaders on Twitter,” is just complete BS. The reasoning laid out in the post states that, “Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” it then goes on to read, “It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
Let’s break down both of those sentences because in a way, they are almost contradictory to one another.
At first Twitter is saying that if the company bans Trump, people of the world will not be able to see and/or debate the information. First, that’s just flat out wrong and if anything makes it seem like Twitter is bigger than it actually is (compared to Facebook’s more than 1 billion active users, Twitter has about 1/4 of that). But even if Trump wasn’t on Twitter people could still use the platform to discuss/debate/talk about his policies/antics. So that seems to be a moot point anyway.
The second sentence, I think, proves the point I made above. Twitter knows that if Trump isn’t using their platform to rant and rave, he’d find another platform where he could. I don’t buy the fact they say it would hamper the discussion because he’s currently the president of the United States of America, he has the biggest megaphone on the planet earth regardless of whether he has access to Twitter or not. Every president before him had the same megaphone (even those that were in office before Twitter existed).
But if that wasn’t enough BS, the post went on to read, “No one person’s account drives Twitter’s growth, or influences these decisions.” Please don’t insult our intelligence, Twitter. The company has had nothing but problems since it first started, problems that have been exacerbated by going public.
Twitter’s growth is pretty much non-existent and shareholders aren’t happy (the stock is currently sitting at $24 down from a high of $69 in 2014). It’s laughable to say that Trump’s Twitter account isn’t responsible for their most recent growth. Hell, I remember the days on Twitter when the company had a dedicated server rack to handle Justin Bieber’s account. “No one person’s account drives Twitter’s growth,”–give me a break.
Bottom line is that if Twitter bans Trump he’ll just go somewhere else and that is something they cannot afford.
