Twitter has more tools against Trump

Twitter's moves to label or hide comments from President Donald Trump have escalated a feud between the social network and the White House, but there could be more to come.

The messaging platform has a range of "enforcement" options for dealing with content in violation of its policies, each of which carries its own potential risks and costs.
"Twitter has shown a newfound willingness to enforce its policies," said Daniel Kreiss, a University of North Carolina professor specializing in politics and social media.
"If you're a private company you have a right to regulate content, and it behooves those companies to enforce these polices in a fair and transparent and publicly justifiable way. I think Twitter will do this in a consistent way."

While Twitter could have acted before on Trump's tweets, "I think there has been a gradual shift in thinking at Twitter inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its thinking about misinformation that is harmful," said Tiffany Li, a fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project who specializes in social media.

Twitter co-founder wants more mainstream website

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who returned this week to the company after a two-year absence, wants to make the microblogging site more approachable to the masses, he said on Tuesday.
"We have a lot of mainstream awareness but mainstream relevancy is still a challenge," Dorsey said during an event in New York hosted by the Columbia Journalism School.

Dorsey, who will oversee product development while serving as Twitter's executive chairman, acknowledged that the service is "something that people can't immediately get their head around."

Known for short messages limited to 140 characters called tweets, Twitter has emerged as one of the most popular social media companies. It counts among its users celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Conan O'Brien and Charlie Sheen.

Still, relatively few of Twitter's more than 200 million registered users are active on the site. Research firm eMarketer cited data showing that less than 25 percent of Twitter users generate about 90 percent of tweets.

Dorsey said he wants to concentrate on users "that don't really understand what Twitter is and see Twitter mainly as a consumption experience."

"We need to refocus on the value and that is my goal in the next few months," he said.

Dorsey started Twitter in 2006 along with Evan Williams and Biz Stone. He served as its first chief executive until Williams replaced him in 2008.

He returns as Twitter faces questions about competition from rivals such as Facebook, and its business model that includes advertiser-sponsored tweets. Even so, Twitter's perceived value among investors has grown by leaps and bounds.