Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Wednesday that he thought his company’s decision to permanently suspend President Trump was the right call.
Twitter first suspended Mr. Trump’s account one week ago before enacting a permanent ban on Friday. With the benefit of hindsight, Mr. Dorsey said he thinks he was right to block the president of the United States from communicating on Twitter.
“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,” Mr. Dorsey said in a tweet. “Was this correct?”
“I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety,” Mr. Dorsey continued. “Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.”
Mr. Dorsey did not expound upon the information Twitter used that led to its permanent ban of Mr. Trump in his tweets on Wednesday. Prior to its decision to enact the permanent ban, Twitter threatened Mr. Trump with a permanent suspension for future violations of its rules. Then, Twitter banned Mr. Trump without alleging that the president had committed additional violations.
Mr. Dorsey noted that if users do not like Twitter’s rules and enforcement, then they “can simply go to another internet service.” Parler, an anti-Big Tech social media platform and Twitter competitor, has been removed from Apple and Google’s app stores since Twitter banned Mr. Trump, and Amazon subsequently took the company offline.
The Twitter CEO also noted that he did not believe social media platforms and tech companies’ collective actions against the president were “coordinated.”
“[H]aving to ban an account has real and significant ramifications,” Mr. Dorsey tweeted. “While there are clear and obvious exceptions, I feel a ban is a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation. And a time for us to reflect on our operations and the environment around us.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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