On September 6, 2018, the New York Times published an article titled “Republicans Accuse Twitter of Exhibiting Bias” which describes the court battle held between Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey and the Republican party. In this case, members of the Republican party claimed that Twitter used algorithms to purposefully keep conservative content off of people’s timelines. President Trump himself claimed that Twitter, along with other companies like Facebook and Google, is trying to “squash positive content about him.”

I see this as fairly neutral coverage for Twitter because the article explains that Twitter had clear evidence to prove that these claims are false. A professional analysis showed no difference in the amount of exposure that both Democrat and Republican House and Senate members received on Twitter – and the numbers don’t lie. Mr. Dorsey added, “Our responsibility is to understand, measure, and reduce accidental bias due to… our algorithms.”

Twitter stock is at an all-time high with more monthly users than they’ve seen in the past, and they can credit a lot of this to President Trump’s election itself. Although he probably won’t, I think President Trump should tweet a short apology to Twitter for this uninformed accusation. The irony and humor in this might be able to (slightly) pull him out of the hole he dug himself into.

As for Twitter, I think this can be a fun and positive PR situation. They could take this opportunity to make a short graphic video that describes their algorithm and shows the facts. It can also be a time for Dorsey to directly address his audience considering he isn’t a household name like Mark Zuckerberg. In this, he can mention that regardless of the freedom of speech, his platform does not tolerate any threats or harassment of any kind, regardless of political views, and that these tweets will be removed from their platform.