Amy Klobuchar says she doesn’t trust Elon Musk at helm of Twitter, which critics say makes her a hypocrites.
At a tech conference in San Francisco this week, the Democratic presidential candidate from Minnesota took a shot at the tech mogul for his handling of his Twitter account, blaming him for the spread of misinformation on his social media platform.
On Sunday, the CEO sent a barrage of tweets about Trump before saying he “let slip a little bit of info” in a series of tweets on Monday morning. He later deleted his tweets.
The social media platform, which has around 260 million monthly active users, underlines the sensitivity of the situation and makes clear that it needs to be taken seriously on a day when it is criticized as a source of bad information and fake news.
“My Twitter account has been used as the ‘lighthouse’ for accurate, non-partisan, and non-controversial information on topics like foreign affairs, health-care, immigration, the environment, and more,” Musk wrote. “Over the past few years, it has occasionally been used as a platform for misinformation and false information, which has been used to stoke anger and discord across the country.”
In particular, the CEO said, he had let slip information about Trump’s charitable foundation at a time when it was being investigated for possible conflicts of interest
“There’s a lot of incorrect information on Twitter and I shouldn’t have let it slip. If I had, it would have been used to attack me and my family. If I had, it would have been used to attack my company,” he wrote.
He added: “I regret that I let slip a little bit of info that might be misleading. (I now retract the information.) But let me be clear: I never put my personal feelings above the security and integrity of my company. I have never and will never put my Twitter account at risk for the public good.”
He followed up with: “Regardless of the issue or controversy at hand, I will always put the public interest before my own. I will continue to employ the most strict standards for maintaining the highest levels of trust of the public and will continue to be open and accessible to my followers. I have confidence in the people who work for me and the people who follow us, and that is why I have always put the public interest first, even when it feels challenging.