No, this isn't acting like an authoritarian at all. Presidential popular vote loser Donald Trump apparently excluded Twitter's leadership from a meeting he held with tech leaders Wednesday over an emoji dispute during the election.
Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation. […]The incident at issue was detailed in a Medium post last month by Gary Coby, director of digital advertising and fundraising for the Trump campaign. According to Coby, [Twitter CEO Jack] Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying—as part of a $5 million deal between the social media company and the campaign—an emoji showing, in various renderings, small bags of money being given away or stolen. That emoji would have been offered to users as a replacement for the hashtag #CrookedHillary, a preferred Trump insult for his Democratic opponent.
"We told them it was BS and what they were doing with a public platform was incredibly reckless and dangerous," wrote Coby of the back-and-forth between the Trump operation and Twitter.
Those are two arguments that will never hold sway with Trump—he built his entire run for office on bullshit that is reckless and dangerous. Supposedly RNC spokesman and Trump transition adviser Sean Spicer made the call to cut Twitter out, but it's not hard to figure out where that directive came from.
This should make Twitter feel very good about being in the lead among big tech companies in refusing to help Trump build his Muslim registry. And it's not like they should fear any real blowback from Trump. After all, Trump needs Twitter a lot more than it needs him.
Yeah, we believe this:
If the issue of Trump’s loins hadn’t been sitting in—a walking conflict of interest!—there’d have been gobs of room.