Who Wrote These Donald Trump Tweets?
We’ll never know for sure, but the device they were written on—iPhone or Android—offers a clue.
Since the beginning of the campaign, Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been one of the main channels through which he broadcasts his message to the world. That message, as we all know by now, is a goulash of insults, campaign announcements, and patriotic slogans. Well, mostly insults.
But who’s writing the tweets? Back in July, Gawker surmised that only some of them—the ones written on an Android device—were penned by Trump himself, and that iPhone-toting “handlers” wrote the rest. On Tuesday, a data scientist named David Robinson analyzed the Android and iPhone tweets and made a strong case that they were, in fact, written by two sets of authors.
The Android tweets sound like the Trump you know: angry, negative, personal. The iPhone tweets are just a little off. Can you tell the difference?
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.