Blame me, not my staff for 'fact-check': Twitter CEO on Trump's threat

A day after US president Donald Trump in a veiled threat hinted to shut down Twitter after the social media platform added fact-check labels to his tweets on mail-in voting, its CEO Jack Dorsey on Thursday (May 28) said he is ultimately accountable for the actions of the company, and his employees should be left out of it.

Dorsey, however, maintained that Twitter will continue to fact check and call out fake news about elections globally.

“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,” he tweeted on Wednesday.

Responding to Facebook CEO’s criticism of Twitter, Dorsey said the fact-check label, however, doesn’t make the social media site “an arbiter of truth” with their only intention being to give people the correct information to enable them to make a judgment for themselves.

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“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,” he tweeted.

Twitter had tagged two of Donald Trump’s tweets in which he stated that more mail-in voting will lead to a ‘rigged election’ this November. There is no evidence that attempts are being made to rig the election. Under the tweets, Twitter posted a link which read, ‘Get the facts about mail-in ballots.’

Without making direct mention of Twitter, Trump had threatened to regulate or close social media sites.

“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that….” he tweeted.

He was backed by Zuckerberg who in an interview with Fox News had said that “private companies shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth.”