Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has defended the ban on outgoing US President Donald Trump, saying that it was the right move as offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real.
Trump was banned from Twitter for citing “risk of further incitement of violence”, following the incident that left five people dead including a police officer at the US Capitol Hill.
“I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning, we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter,” Dorsey said in one of his tweets.
I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?
— jack (@jack) January 14, 2021
He blamed Twitter’s failure ‘to promote healthy conversation,” acknowledged that Twitter needs to ‘look critically at inconsistencies of our policy and enforcement”.
“The check and accountability on this power have always been the fact that a service like Twitter is one small part of the larger public conversation happening across the internet.
“If folks do not agree with our rules and enforcement, they can simply go to another internet service,” Dorsey emphasized.
This concept was challenged last week when a number of foundational internet tool providers also decided not to host what they found dangerous.
“I do not believe this was coordinated. More likely: companies came to their own conclusions or were emboldened by the actions of others,” he added
Twitter said that more than 70,000 harmful accounts have been suspended as a result of its efforts after the violence in Washington, DC, with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts.
These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.
