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Twitter donates R21 million+ to help fight Trump on immigration

In a weird turn of events, Twitter – you know, the social media platform President Donald Trump uses the most – has given a sizeable donation to forces ranged against him.

Twitter has given $1.59 million (~R21 million) to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to help in the fight against Trump’s immigration policy, which bans citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The ACLU is also going after Trump for not releasing his tax returns.

According to a report on TechCrunch, the initial donation came from a pool of 925 Twitter employees who pulled together just over $530 000. CEO Jack Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani then matched this sum and the entire amount was gifted to the ACLU.

“Our work is far from done. In the coming months we’ll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements,” Twitter General Counsel Vijaya Gadde wrote in a company-wide memo, which was leaked to TechCrunch.

“But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I’m proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people.”

We now wait with baited breath to see Trump’s tweet on this. Who wants to bet he calls Twitter an irrelevant platform and uses the phrase ‘so sad’?

Twitter is just the latest tech firm to add financial capital to the fight against Trump’s immigration policy, which many are calling ‘the Muslim ban’. Earlier this week, Google donated $54.4 million to four entities fighting the immigration policy, including the ACLU. Since then, more digital firms have added their voices – and cash – to the mix.

It’s Silicon Valley’s contention that the ban will adversely affect their businesses through restricting the movements of their employees – a notion borne out by the fact that the shares prices of some of the USA’s biggest tech firms went into freefall shortly after the policy was implemented.

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