The director of digital advertising and fundraising for Donald Trump´s presidential campaign, Gary Coby, claimed that Twitter CEO Jac Dorsey, censor ads that were pre-approved, which consisted in specially devised emojis against the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The emojis were a hand holding a bag of money and a figure of a person escaping with one of these.
Twitter Didn't Want The Users To Believe That The Platform Was Endorsing Trump
According to the Daily Mail, Trump´s campaign agreed to spend $5 million in August 2016 on some advertising elements, which included custom hashtag emojis and promote trends, but less than a month later, Coby claimed that the team had its first censorship experience when it wanted to tweak the design of an emoji that the platform already approved. The new design was the figure of a person running with the money, to which Twitter didn't allow to use because users could believe that the social network was endorsing a political party or a specific candidate.
However, the worst case would come some months later, since Coby worked in conjunction with Twitter to design a moneybag with wings emoji, which was also approved by the social network, however, just 24 hours before the campaign was about to live, he was told that Jack Dorsey didn't want the emoji to run on the platform, since there wasn't a paid-for-by-disclaimer, which was extremely suspicious or Coby, considering that the RNC and the DNC actually did the same without disclaimers.
Coby Said This Were A Jack Dorsey´s Political Move
According to Recode, Twitter didn't want users to believe that the hashtag #CrookedHillary and its emojis was somehow sponsored by the company, which could mean a huge issue for the company, in a time in which its struggling over the users´ leak issue. Giving this situation, the platform decided to pull the ad campaign, saying that it wouldn't run again any kind of sponsored hashtag emojis for a political campaign from now on.
Although the social network explained the situation to Trump´s team, Coby stated that this was a political move from Jack Dorsey, who wanted to restrict advertising from the Republican nominee. Twitter CEO has been facing a lot of problems since he got back to the company, since many members of the board wants to sell it, but he wants the platform to keep its independence.
