Twitter Rejected From Trump’s Tech Meeting Over Failed Emoji Deal

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks as (2nd L to R) PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook and Oracle CEO Safra Catz look on during a meeting with technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York U.S., December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton - RTX2V24O

President-elect Donald Trump had a meeting with major U.S. tech companies including Apple, Amazon, oracle, Facebook and Tesla, but one major technology company was not present at the meeting- Twitter.

People present at the meeting included Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk. The omission of a Twitter executive was striking, especially because Trump is renowned for his use of Twitter.

According to Politico, Twitter was ‘bounced’ from the meeting because during the Presidential campaign the company refused to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary.

“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, 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.”

B&T has contacted Twitter about the meeting, but they declined to comment. However, when the #CrookedHillary emoji incident happened a Twitter spokeseperson explained to Recode: 

We have had specific discussions with several political organizations, including the Trump campaign, regarding branded emojis as part of broad advertising campaigns on Twitter. We believe that political advertising merits a level of disclosure and transparency that branded political emojis do not meet, and we ultimately decided not to permit this particular format for any political advertising.

Here are some Tweets about the meeting:

Featured image: Donald Trump speaks as (2nd L to R) PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook and Oracle CEO Safra Catz look on during a meeting with technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York U.S., December 14, 2016. REUTERS




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