Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and President Trump met behind closed doors to discuss social media ahead of the 2020 election

REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey

• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met with President Donald Trump on Tuesday at the White House.
• The meeting was held to discuss "the world of social media in general," Trump said in a Twitter post.
• On the morning of Tuesday's meeting, Trump unleashed a series of tweets accusing Twitter of political bias and alleging the company removed some of his followers.

Twitter executives met with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, where the parties discussed the health of conversation on the platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump shared a picture on Twitter of the meeting, which showed CEO Jack Dorsey and a number of Twitter executives in the Oval Office. 

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During the meeting, Trump and Twitter execs discussed the social platform's "commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections," a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider.

In an internal email circulated among Twitter employees that was leaked to Motherboard, Dorsey said he believed such conversation with Trump "bridges gaps and drives towards solutions."

"I have met with every world leader who has extended an invitation to me, and I believe the discussions have been productive, and the outcomes meaningful," Dorsey wrote in the email. "Some of you will be very supportive of our meeting [with] the president, and some of you might feel we shouldn't take this meeting at all. In the end, I believe it's important to meet heads of state in order to listen, share our principles and our ideas."

Read more: Trump blasts Twitter as 'very discriminatory,' says the social-media company removes his followers

The Tuesday meeting with Twitter executives came hours after Trump took to his personal Twitter account to blast the social platform for what he called "very discriminatory" behavior against him, including lowering his follower count. He also said Twitter was playing "political games," and that he'd heard "big complaints from many people."

Trump has a history of leveling accusations of political bias at big tech companies like Facebook and Google. However, he's called out Twitter in particular. In November, Trump tweeted that the social platform was removing followers of his Twitter account.

But big names have seen their follower count decrease in the past as Twitter clamps down on bots and inactive accounts. In July 2018, for example, Twitter removed inactive accounts that may have been taken over by bots, and Dorsey himself lost 200,00 followers.

Twitter is often criticized from both liberals and conservatives. Some critics argue that the social media company hasn't done enough to monitor Trump's presence on the platform. Some have criticized Twitter for letting Trump stay on the platform even after his actions and tweets have appeared to violate Twitter's rules. 

However, Twitter has said that blocking a "world leader" like Trump from the platform would "hide important information people should be able to see and debate."

During Tuesday's meeting, Trump and Twitter executives also discussed "efforts underway to respond to the opioid crisis," the Twitter spokesperson said.

A new post on Twitter's blog details the platform's efforts to "help prevent drug misuse, curb illegal online drug sales, and promote public health information." This includes reviving an awareness campaign on Twitter, in partnership with the US government, to encourage people to bring their leftover prescription drug bottles to designated drop-off locations to prevent drug misuse.