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SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – When US President Donald Trump leaves the White House, he also leaves behind any immunity he may have from social media rules.
Efforts by Twitter and Facebook to balance letting political leaders speak to people without restriction with enforcing rules on hateful and deceptive posts have given Trump a leeway not given to regular users.
But whatever special treatment Trump has enjoyed ends with his presidency.
“Twitter’s approach to world leaders, candidates and public officials is based on the principle that people should be able to choose to see what their leaders say in a clear context,” a spokesman for the Twitter messaging platform told AFP. Trump.
“This policy framework applies to current world leaders and candidates for public office, and not to private citizens when they no longer hold these positions.”
Therefore, Trump posts masked with warnings or amended with labels could qualify for removal.
“I suppose the argument around not completely removing content from world leaders is because it is important that we know what they are saying,” said Professor Casey Fiesler of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“I don’t know if I would describe it as leniency. But it certainly is a different way his policy is applied.”
Twitter says that the accounts of world leaders are not completely above its takedown policies, particularly when it comes to promoting terrorism, threats of violence or the public posting of personal information about people, such as where they live.
The fact that Trump has relentlessly tried to undermine the integrity of the election and falsely claim victory is important for American citizens to know, scholars reason, while acknowledging that his words themselves pose a threat to democracy.
“You have to weigh those two things,” said Professor Fiesler. “You could say that Twitter could have deleted his account a long time ago.”
Persona non grata?
Facebook has been under pressure to clamp down on political disinformation since it failed to stop campaigns for foreign influence in the 2016 US elections, while at the same time remaining an open platform for debate.
The social network took a different path from Twitter, which earlier this year decided to label Trump’s comments as misleading and otherwise limit the scope of the president’s comments for violating the platform’s policy of promoting violence.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has consistently resisted putting limits on Trump’s rhetoric, saying “the best way to hold politicians accountable is by voting, and I think we have to trust voters to make judgments for themselves “.
Facebook tightened its rules for fiercely contentious elections, banning last-minute political ads and misleading information about the vote, and adding information labels to premature victory claims.
Given the common vitriol in Trump’s posts, once he loses his protected social media status as president, he could end up persona non grata, reasoned University of California, Berkeley School of Information professor Hany Farid.
Twitter said Friday that it had banned an account created by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that called for the execution of federal officials.
The @WarRoomPandemic account was “permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules, specifically our policy on glorification of violence,” said a statement from the social media platform.
Before the account was locked, it included a call from Bannon to remove the heads of FBI Director Christopher Wray and the government’s top pandemic expert, Anthony Fauci.
If a former President Trump calls for violence on Facebook or Twitter posts, he too should be banned for life, argued Professor Farid.
“Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and all other platforms must take that seriously,” said Professor Farid.
“For Citizen Trump, they could follow the rules.”
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