Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Twitter Cut Out of Trump's Tech Meeting Over Emoji Dispute

Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation, reports Politico.

More from Politico:
The incident at issue was detailed in a Medium post last month by Gary Coby, director of digital advertising and fundraising for the Trump campaign. According to Coby, Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying — as part of a $5 million deal between the social media company and the campaign — an emoji showing, in various renderings, small bags of money being given away or stolen. That emoji would have been offered to users as a replacement for the hashtag #CrookedHillary, a preferred Trump insult for his Democratic opponent.

"We told them it was BS and what they were doing with a public platform was incredibly reckless and dangerous," wrote Coby of the back-and-forth between the Trump operation and Twitter.

According to the source, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer, who is an adviser to the Trump transition, made the call to refuse an invitation to Dorsey or other Twitter executives to the meeting, which was organized by Silicon Valley investor and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, who has been an adviser to Trump. The Trump-Pence transition team also did not respond to a request for comment.

Spicer told the Washington Examiner in October about the emoji dustup that "while Twitter claims to be a venue that promotes the free exchange of ideas, it's clear that it's leadership's left wing ideology literally trumps that."

In recent days, Twitter also found itself standing apart from its Silicon Valley counterparts when it comes to Trump. It was the only major to tech company to say on the record that it would refuse to participate in building a "Muslim registry" that the president-elect has proposed.

2 comments:

  1. And so will he refuse to give tax breaks to Twitter? Wondering what will come of this meeting, what it's about.

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  2. "We told them it was BS and what they were doing with a public platform was incredibly reckless and dangerous," wrote Coby of the back-and-forth between the Trump operation and Twitter."

    There is no such thing as a "public" forum or platform, and Twitter's behavior with their property was of no danger to others.

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