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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the closing-the-barn-door dept.

If anyone knows how important Twitter is to Donald Trump, it's the president.

“Without the tweets, I wouldn't be here,” he told the Financial Times last month.

To which Twitter's co-founder says: Sorry about that, world.

Evan Williams, who still sits on the company's board of directors, recently told The New York Times that he wants to repair the damage he thinks Twitter and the broader Internet have wrought on society in the form of trolls, cyberbullies, live-streamed violence, fake news and — yes — Trump.

“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times. “I was wrong about that.”

“If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry,” he said.

Is Twitter responsible?


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  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:21PM

    by DECbot (832) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:21PM (#514297) Journal

    Evan Williams should be ecstatic! Finally a good use case for Twitter that the marketing types can capitalize on. They should charge AP and other reporters to access and advertise the shit out of the political tweet streams. Here is a use case that actually shows that Twitter might be worth something, and they apologize for it. Yeah, the content is garbage, but so is broadcast TV and most of the internet. As a member of the board and a co-founder, he should finding a way to monetize his product like Google & Facebook, not spinning gears fretting about the political correctness of each of his users.

    Evan, make your platform better technically and make it self-sustainable without relying on investors for payroll and operating expenses.

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