Leave our employees out of this: Twitter CEO tells Trump

PTI, May 28, 2020, 4:43 PM IST

Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey responded back to US President Donald Trump on Wednesday after the president warned to shutter social media platforms as Twitter added fact check warnings to his tweets.

Dorsey said that the website’s effort to point out misinformation did not make it an “arbiter of truth.”

“Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves,” he tweeted.

He doubled down on the new policy, writing: “Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.”

This does not make us an “arbiter of truth.” Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.

— jack (@jack) May 28, 2020

On Wednesday, Twitter tagged two of Donald Trump’s tweets in which he claimed that more mail-in voting would lead to what he called a “Rigged Election” this November.

There is no evidence that attempts are being made to rig the election, and under the tweets, Twitter posted a link which read: “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”

Apparently, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg also waded into the row, telling Fox News that his social network still the biggest in the world has a different policy.

“I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Zuckerberg said in a snippet of the interview posted online Wednesday by Fox.

“I think, in general, private companies, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that,” he added.