Twitter co-founder Ev Williams defended his social network and said Fox News is more destructive than Twitter could ever be.
Williams made the assertion in a CNN interview after being asked about President Trump’s extensive use of Twitter, often to bash his political opponents.
“The vast majority of the electorate is not on Twitter reading Trump’s tweets and being convinced by that,” Williams told CNN Business at the Collision tech conference in Toronto on Tuesday. “What they’re convinced much more by is the destructive power of Fox News, which is much, much more powerful and much more destructive than Twitter.”
“What Trump has done with Twitter is pretty genius, frankly,” he said. “He’s a master of the platform like few others.”
Williams explained his reasoning further on his Twitter account on Wednesday.
*And*, yes, we (Twitter) should have invested more heavily in abuse before. I think we did more in the early days than we often get credit for (and they are doing way more today). *And* I personally underestimated the looming problem during my brief tenure as CEO.
— Ev (@ev) May 22, 2019
I probably won’t read the replies so it doesn’t matter that much. But I’ll know they’re there.
— Ev (@ev) May 22, 2019
Liberal groups have called for Twitter to suspend Trump’s account for what they say are violations of Twitter’s terms of service.
“We’re writing to you nearly 300,000 strong with a simple request: Don’t give hate a platform,” a letter from Women’s March to Twitter’s board of directors and shareholders read. “Our members have signed petitions asking Twitter to remove one of the clearest and most present dangers on its platform — Donald Trump.”
The group dropped off the petitions on Monday at Twitter’s headquarters in New York City and San Francisco.
