President Donald Trump called out a single Twitter employee Thursday in a tweet complaining that the platform’s decision to fact check his tweets on mail balloting could “taint” the U.S. election.
“So ridiculous to see Twitter trying to make the case that Mail-In Ballots are not subject to FRAUD,” Trump tweeted. “How stupid, there are examples, & cases, all over the place. Our election process will become badly tainted & a laughingstock all over the World.”
Trump then directed his 80 million Twitter followers to “tell that to your hater,” and included the Twitter handle of an employee who runs Twitter’s site integrity team, Yoel Roth. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway blamed the same employee on Wednesday of single-handedly making the decision to fact check the president’s Tuesday tweets about mail-in voting.
The company responded Wednesday by trying to protect the employee from potential harassment from the president’s supporters. Twitter’s head of legal and policy, Vijaya Gadde, tweeted Wednesday, “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions.” A Twitter spokesperson also said the decision to label Trump’s tweets was made by a number of high ranking executives on Twitte’s policy and legal teams. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey on Wednesday said if anyone should be held responsible, it should be him. “Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this,” he tweeted.
Conway and Trump singled out Roth, in part, because of his own Twitter history. Roth, who has worked at Twitter since 2015, has posted many tweets over the years criticizing the president, including some that liken Trump to a Nazi.
A Twitter spokesperson said Wednesday that Roth had received death threats as a result of the accusations. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on Trump’s Thursday tweet.
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