Trump Met With Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Complained About His Follower Count
President Trump on Tuesday met privately with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a huddle at the White House between one of the site’s most prolific users and an executive who’s faced criticism for the way Twitter has handled the president’s tweets.
The meeting came as Trump continues to attack the tech industry, threatening to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter out of concern that they censor conservatives online — an allegation those companies fiercely deny.
The president’s latest salvo arrived just hours before he met with Dorsey: Trump accused Twitter of playing “political games” and tampering with his nearly 60 million followers.
A significant portion of the meeting focused on Trump’s concerns that Twitter quietly, and deliberately, has limited or removed some of his followers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity because it was private. Trump said he had heard from fellow conservatives who had lost followers for unclear reasons as well.
But Twitter long has explained that follower figures fluctuate as the company takes action to remove fraudulent spam accounts. In the meeting, Dorsey stressed that point, noting even he had lost followers as part of Twitter’s work to enforce its policies, according to the source, who described the meeting as cordial.
