Conservative billionaire and hedge fund manager Paul Singer, and his company Elliott Management Corp., bought a sizable stake of Twitter with alleged plans to oust CEO Jack Dorsey over Twitter’s overt political bias.
According to Bloomberg News, Twitter’s Board of Directors will have three available seats at the 2020 annual meeting. Elliott nominated four directors in hopes of filling these vacancies and any others that may arise. Unlike other prominent Silicon Valley CEOs, Dorsey does not have voting power over Twitter because the company only has one class of stock.
Dorsey has long been a target for removal given Twitter’s struggling user growth, poor stock performance, free speech issues, and overt political bias commonly known as “shadowbanning.”
In September 2019, Singer stepped into a new position at AT&T Inc., President Trump said he hoped a Republican investor would “put a stop to all the Fake News emanating” from CNN anchors.
“Great news that an activist investor is now involved with AT&T. As the owner of very low ratings CNN, perhaps they will now put a stop to all of the Fake News emanating from its non-credible ‘anchors,'” Trump tweeted.
…But most importantly, @CNN is bad for the USA. Their International Division spews bad information & Fake News all over the globe. This is why foreign leaders are always asking me, “Why does the Media hate the U.S. sooo much?” It is a fraudulent shame, & all comes from the top!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2019
Republicans are hopeful Singer’s Twitter insurgency will take aim at the social media giant’s overt political bias. Conservatives, pro-life groups, and even left-of-center activists have been hit by Twitter’s bias.
Twitter banned conservative investigate journalist James O’Keefe’s company Project Veritas after they reported a whistleblower report from Pinterest headquarters. The report revealed Pinterest’s bias against pro-lifers and conservative stars such as Ben Shapiro. Twitter banned Project Veritas for violating its “rules against posting private information.”
Twitter also banned Pro-Life San Francisco and the Pinterest whistleblower, Eric Cochran, over tweeting already-public information about the criminal case against David Daleiden, an undercover journalist who filmed Planned Parenthood executives and abortionists.
The bias doesn’t stop with conservatives either. Bans have been enacted against non-partisan individuals who find themselves arguing against far-left policy or ideas. In 2018, Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy was banned from Twitter after writing “men aren’t women.” This allegedly defied Twitter’s views on gender.
“I don’t want to draw a line that ends up silencing people who have political ideas, or who are talking about ideologies, or who are challenging popular discourse that has been deemed offensive,” Murphy told The Hill. “Now we’re banned, we’re silenced, and I actually think it’s quite dangerous. This is the new public square and they know it. They’ve created this platform that they said is a place for people to share ideas.”