Twitter executives think Donald Trump’s tweets keep him accountable

In the past week, both Twitter’s CEO and COO have voiced their support for President Donald Trump’s tweeting habits. Um, sure. CEO Jack Dorsey says in an interview that’ll air on Sunday TODAY that he believes Trump’s tweets keep him accountable.

“I believe it’s really important to have these conversations out in the open, rather than have them behind closed doors. So if we’re all to suddenly take these platforms away, where does it go? What happens? It goes in the dark. And I just don’t think that’s good for anyone.”

Meanwhile, COO Anthony Noto tweeted a response to Trump today after the president threatened to cancel future press briefings.

After getting some blowback from his tweet, Noto followed up with another:

Twitter’s active user base grew by 11 percent this past quarter, which might at least be somewhat attributable to Trump’s favoring of the platform. Clearly, the remaining executives at the company need the president to keep tweeting if for no other reason than to keep Twitter’s name in the news cycle.

Dorsey makes a decent point. We really are, for better or worse, getting a direct look into the mind of Trump. But given that we’ve seen him contradict himself on Twitter, simply having a record isn’t accountability. Accountability requires people and organizations to take action after expectations or promises aren’t met. Twitter doesn’t do this. As for Koto’s comments, well, I don’t think pushing a Twitter Q&A is a good look. C’mon, man.