Twitter founder apologises for platform’s role in ‘making Trump president’

Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, has apologised for the role the social media platform played in the election of US president Donald Trump.

In an interview with New York Times on Saturday, Williams reacted to Trump’s claim that he wouldn’t be the US president “if it wasn’t for Twitter”.

He described such role as “a very bad thing”.

“It’s a very bad thing, Twitter’s role in that,” Williams said. “If it’s true that he wouldn’t be President if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry.

“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place.

“I think the internet is broken. And it’s a lot more obvious to a lot of people that it’s broken.”

Trump has been an active Twitter user prior to his emergence as US president and even more now that he’s the president.

During the build up to the US presidential election, he had made use of the medium to criticise the Obama presidency and its policies.

The platform was also used extensively by his supporters during the period to advocate him and to denounce Hilary Clinton, his then running mate.

He currently has 29.7m followers on his personal account on Twitter – @realDonaldTrump – and since taken over the official twitter account of the US president – @potus – where he has 17.6m followers.

The US president has always taken to the social media platform to pour out his vituperations regarding comments in the news about his administration.

He recently criticised the probe of possible collusion between his presidential campaign and Moscow through Twitter.