Twitter Co-Founder Slams ‘Destructive,’ ‘Powerful’ Fox News

May 22nd, 2019 2:41 PM

Twitter is built with an apocalyptic attitude toward conservatives and conservative media.

The company’s co-founder Ev Williams told CNN Business in a May 22 interview that he believed that Twitter was not destructive towards the political landscape in the U.S. However, he threw shade at another more established outlet, Fox News. Williams, who is also the founder and CEO of Medium, called Fox News “destructive.”

Williams defended President Donald Trump’s Twitter account to CNN, which called the president’s tweets “false and misleading.” But Williams he had nothing but negativity to offer Fox News. “The vast majority of the electorate is not on Twitter reading Trump’s tweets and being convinced by that,” he said. “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.”

Fox News and its hosts have boycotted Twitter since November of 2018, when Antifa groups mobbed in front of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s house and posted his address on Twitter. The site was much criticized for how poorly it responded. The official Fox News Twitter account has not tweeted since November 8, 2018.

CNN commented that, “Traditional media outlets have devoted extensive coverage to the destructive effects of Big Tech companies while not examining their own role in creating a more polarized society.” All the while, perhaps CNN missed the irony behind calling out traditional media for being “polarizing.” This is the network that speculated that Trump supporters will “foam at the mouth” at the president’s “calls for violence” at rallies.  

Williams denied that Twitter benefited physically from the president’s active Twitter status, saying, “The fact that the president is on there and causing a lot of noise … doesn’t necessarily direct more users or more money.”