Twitter Responds to Questions on Helping Build a Muslim Registry

Online publication The Intercept reported on Friday that Twitter was the only one to answer with a swift no to hypothetical question involving Trump’s “Muslim registry.”

The Intercept contacted nine prominent tech firms like Facebook and Microsoft, asking, “Would [name of company], if solicited by the Trump administration, sell any goods, services, information, or consulting of any kind to help facilitate the creation of a national Muslim registry, a project which has been floated tentatively by the president-elect’s transition team?”

Would they would sell their services to help create the national Muslim registry proposed by Donald Trump during his campaign and recently brought up by his Transition Team? Would they assist a president who was elected mainly because of his racist values?

The Intercept says that they’re not trying to say that these companies are supportive of Trump. They say that these tech companies should be vocal about where they stand on such issues.

After two weeks of calls and emails, they received three answers of the nine companies. Out of these three, only Twitter, ironically Trump’s favorite mode of social media, said they wouldn’t. The rest either didn’t answer or declined to comment, except for Microsoft who said they wouldn’t be talking about hypotheticals at this point. They did link a company blog post about their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

The Intercept says that they’re not trying to say that these companies are supportive of Trump. They say that these tech companies should be vocal about where they stand on such issues. The report noted “…it’s asking very little of today’s tech companies to prompt them to go on record as unwilling to help create a federal list of Muslims.”

The Intercept’s article title is a bit misleading, implying that the other companies are all anti-Muslim, which is not certain. We should make efforts to avoid misinformation in a time like this. But the lack of an answer is a little disappointing. A good PR department would reply with an adamant no and cite their company’s anti-racist values.

One tech company who definitely is aligning itself with Trump values is IBM. After the election, CEO Ginni Rometty wrote a congratulatory letter to Trump, offering the services of her company. Fun fact: IBM also helped out Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

As the country prepares for Trump’s inauguration, we will watch political figures, companies and other notables make choices on how they will deal with his presidency. What side of history will they be on?