Chris White on May 22, 2019
Twitter co-founder Ev Williams said Tuesday he believes Fox News is much more “powerful” and “destructive” than the company he helped create.
“The vast majority of the electorate is not on Twitter reading [President Donald] Trump’s tweets and being convinced by that,” Williams told CNN Business in an interview in Toronto. “What they’re convinced much more by is the destructive power of Fox News, which is much, much more powerful and much more destructive than Twitter.”
He also called Trump a “master” of the platform, telling CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan: “What Trump has done with Twitter is pretty genius, frankly.” Fox News did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Williams also criticized the media for focusing too much on tech companies. “Why the media’s not critiquing itself I think is kind of obvious, and it’s very easy to blame the tech platforms,” he said. “But it’s an ecosystem and the traditional media companies that have benefited financially from Trump very much outweigh the tech companies.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly criticized Facebook and Twitter in the past for supposedly targeting conservative content.
“I will be looking into this!” Trump wrote in a tweet in March before adding the hashtag “#StopTheBias.” He was likely referring to reports showing that White House social media director Dan Scavino Jr. was temporarily blocked from making public Facebook comments that month.
