Two competing interests: let's ban our political opponent and let's keep our cash cow.
The middle management & line workers of Twitter can monetize their small Twitter stock portfolios pretty quick without shifting the market all that much. Jack, on the other hand, would take a major hit if he tried to sell off his.
=edit=
Clarification on content_sesh's good point: I don't assume whether Jack agrees or disagrees with Trump's points. They are billionaires, might be "frenemies" for all we know. I do assume Jack likes a cash-cow for his major property, Twitter - and tries to balance the upsides & downsides of hosting Trump's contentious content.
I"m not sure where you're getting the idea that Jack disagrees with most or even many of Trump's policies.
edit to clarify in response to parent's edit (lol):
I don't doubt Twitter enjoyed being the primary platform for our extremely online president. I was getting at the "political opponents" thing. I feel there's a tendency where people like Jack and Zuckerburg get categorized as "not on the right politically", because they work in tech and live in California I guess. I disagree with that characterization, and my main reason is how they've allowed their platforms to be used.
For a very long time now, I've personally seen Twitter being used to amplify regressive, right-wing views while quashing (via suspension or permanent suspension) leftist voices that challenge them. The best way I can describe it succinctly would be a pervasive double-standard when applying their rules. So I, personally, specifically do not believe that Jack or Twitter leadership have aligned themselves politically against the right.
There's clear and strong undercurrent of Twitter employees and middle management expressing opposition to Trump, and also expressing sympathy to various left wing causes. Similar to other tech firms, like Google or Facebook.
That's why I point out conflict of interest inside Twitter. Might be partly ownership stake matter, partly cultural matter - employees tend to be a generation younger than management, and tend to have gone through a different path through life.
I think that's a bit cynical. This is the President of the USA we're talking about. His words matter for the sake of history. I believe it was smart to capture a log of his statements. It will be essential to the record. They should have also disallowed him from deleting tweets, but I suspect they have a copy of everything he ever posted since they claimed it was significant discourse.
The responsibility of archiving presidential records should really not fall on a private company. If I had to put money on whether Twitter will be around a couple of decades from now, it'll be an easy "no".
Bingo. Think back to 2015 and how Twitter was doing back then. I don’t know how many millions of real users they’ve added since then, but the Trump presidency has been a boon for them. Way more people on the platform, and tons of them will stick around even after the ban.
The middle management & line workers of Twitter can monetize their small Twitter stock portfolios pretty quick without shifting the market all that much. Jack, on the other hand, would take a major hit if he tried to sell off his.
=edit=
Clarification on content_sesh's good point: I don't assume whether Jack agrees or disagrees with Trump's points. They are billionaires, might be "frenemies" for all we know. I do assume Jack likes a cash-cow for his major property, Twitter - and tries to balance the upsides & downsides of hosting Trump's contentious content.