Twitter founder: Trump presidency is product of short attention spans

President Donald Trump is a symptom of a media environment based on short attention spans that is making the world stupider, one of the founders of Twitter has said. Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of the network, said Trump’s election highlighted a wider issue about how social media platforms were helping to “dumb the entire world down” and undermining our sense of truth. Earlier in 2017 President Trump said he would not be president if it “wasn’t for Twitter”. Williams was asked whether President Trump’s prolific use of Twitter had given him pause for thought, during an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He replied: “The much bigger issue is not Donald Trump using Twitter that got him elected, even if he says so; it is the quality of the information we consume that is reinforcing dangerous beliefs and isolating people and limiting people’s open-mindedness and respect for truth.”