Twitter should ban.

Jimmy Wales: Twitter should ban Trump

Wikipedia founder says the platform treats high-profile users differently to everyone else.

By JAMES RANDERSON

Donald Trump should have been banned from Twitter “a long time ago," said Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

Speaking at a media conference in Amsterdam, Wales said the U.S. president and other high-profile users such as entrepreneur Elon Musk were able to get away with statements on the social media platform which others would not.

"A lot of stuff he says would not violate the terms of service of Twitter — he's a blowhard and he says false things," said Wales. "But he's attacked people in ways that other people couldn't get away with. I mean they've made it very clear that they are applying the rules differently."

Wales was speaking at the FT's Future of News conference about his site WT.Social — a social media company that asks for financial contributions from members rather than being paid for by advertising.

Wales also singled out Musk, the CEO of Tesla, over his false statement on Twitter that a British cave diver involved in the rescue of a Thai youth football team who were trapped in a flooded cave in 2018 was a “pedo guy.”

“Most people would have been blocked for that," said Wales, speculating that Twitter did not do so because Musk is too valuable to the platform. "I'll tell you why not, because he generates a lot of page views. He generates a lot of ad revenue. I mean I don't want to be cynical. I know the people at Twitter ... and I don't think that they are bad people, but I think their business model is at odds with doing the right thing.”

A spokeswoman for Twitter declined to comment.

In a blog post last month, the social media company said that all posts on its platform, including from world leaders, must comply with its terms of service, but that it had to balance the rights of people to know what politicians were saying online with others' views that such messages were either false or hateful.

Wales did praise the platform's recent decision to exclude paid-for political ads. "On this one I think Twitter has definitely done the right thing and Facebook should do the same. I think for Facebook to accept political advertising and not accept any kind of fact-checking responsibility ... This is really unwise."

"And it's not ... like they make a ton of money from political advertising. It's a small piece of their overall business. I think they are better off without it," Wales added.