(2018-07-22) — President Donald Trump today called on Twitter to do more to promote thought, civility and nuanced discussions of culture, politics and public policy.
In a 5,000-word New York Times op-ed, the president proposed a variety of changes to the current short-form social media platform, that would…
- increase the per-Tweet character limit to 270,340 to “promote deep thought, and careful exposition of ideas,”
- allow a user to retract a Tweet when he realizes an error,
- permit Tweeted corrections to reach all who saw the inaccurate original, and
- introduce a 24-hour ‘cooling off period’ between composing and actually sending the Tweet.
“So often, when I Tweet, I long to fully flesh-out my ideas in a way that promotes civil dialogue, and avoids rash reactions or misunderstanding,” Trump wrote. “But the Twitter platform precludes the kind of introspection, depth of inquiry, and exposition, that foster reasoned discourse in a republic.”