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How Trump’s ‘Social Media Summit’ Muddied the Waters on Tech
Platforms like Facebook should be held to account — but not like this
You might expect that a “Social Media Summit” at the White House would include major social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, and foster useful policy conversations about how those platforms affect democracy and whether they need to be regulated.
President Donald Trump’s Social Media Summit on Thursday, which was closed to the press, did none of those things. The gathering brought together fringe voices, conspiracy theorists, and far-right online agitators to complain about alleged censorship by tech companies, and it gave the president another opportunity to grouse about what he sees as his declining Twitter reach.
“I used to watch it, it’d be like a rocket ship when I put out a beauty,” Trump reminisced about his old tweets at the summit, some of which were printed out on poster boards and displayed at the event.
