Twitter Inc. cofounder Biz Stone believes the social-media company made the right decision when it banned then-President Donald Trump from its service in January, but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with it.
“It’s a scary amount of power,” Stone said during an interview for the recent Collision Conference. “The CEO of a company in San Francisco can quiet the president of the United States. He is not elected, nothing like that, and yet that had a major impact.”
Stone, who cofounded Twitter with Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey in 2006, is the latest tech executive to publicly question whether social-media companies have too much power when it comes to policing people online.
Shortly after the Trump ban, Dorsey himself questioned Twitter’s power. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told US lawmakers last month that he was worried about his company’s role in suspending Trump from its service.
“Many people are concerned that platforms can ban elected leaders,” he said during a March 25 hearing. “I am, too.”
Stone said he wasn’t involved in the formal decision-making process on Trump, although he did send his views to Dorsey and agreed with the decision. “It was a good decision for Twitter I think,” he added. “But it’s also a little bit frightening to know that maybe there’s that much power in one person’s decision.”
Stone was supposed to become “entrepreneur in residence” at the venture capital firm Spark Capital in 2017 when Dorsey persuaded him to return to Twitter instead.
“When I came back, the main reason was ‘let’s improve morale,’” Stone said. He created short films about different teams inside the company to highlight their efforts. He also worked with Dorsey to create the company’s purpose statement, “We serve the public conversation,” which is often repeated by executives on investor calls and press events.
“It worked way better than I thought it would,” he said. “It highlighted all the stuff that wasn’t serving the public conversation and brought up the question ‘why are we even working on these things?’”
Stone said he moved into a part-time adviser role at Twitter earlier this year, and has shifted some of his focus to outside projects, including philanthropy and venture investing.
Image courtesy of David Paul Morris
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