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WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) – As president of the United States, Donald Trump receives special treatment from Twitter when he violates the company’s rules on offensive or misleading content.
That exemption will end in January if he loses the presidency.
The social network treats world leaders’ transgressions differently than regular users and often leaves tweets that violate its content policies, adding a warning rather than forcing users to remove posts.
This is part of Twitter’s philosophy that people should be able to listen to world leaders even when they share controversial posts because their posts are inherently newsworthy.
But the old world leaders are not protected by that policy.
High-profile politicians who are no longer in office, such as former US President Barack Obama, are treated as regular users if they violate Twitter rules, which prohibit messages that include hate speech or posts that glorify violence or contain certain types. false information, such as dangerous health. – related misinformation.
Trump will enter the “ex” group if he leaves office in January, Twitter confirmed.
If that happens, breaking one of Twitter’s rules means your tweets can be removed entirely rather than tagged.
It could also accumulate “strikes” for multiple violations, increasing the severity of the punishment issued by the company and could lead to temporary account freezes, suspensions or even a permanent ban.
With Joe Biden on Thursday approaching the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the presidency, Trump’s path to re-election has narrowed, although he is mounting legal challenges in several states.
Since the polls closed Tuesday night, Twitter has hidden eight tweets from Trump for violating company rules, most of them for trying to undermine the validity of the election results by suggesting that the vote counts are fraudulent and that the Democrats are trying to “steal” the presidency. .
Typically, numerous rule violations in a short period of time would lead to more severe punishment by Twitter, such as account freezing or temporary suspension.
In Trump’s case, all eight tweets were hidden behind a warning label, but were still visible to users who clicked to view them.
Despite the large number of violations in a short time, Trump did not rack up strikes against his account for these violations, according to a person familiar with the company’s compliance policies.
World leaders can be struck for egregious violations of the rules, such as promoting terrorism or a clear threat of violence, which would result in the removal of tweets.
But world leaders don’t collect strikes for rule violations if a tweet is left and tagged, said the person, who asked not to be identified when discussing internal policies.
The warning labels applied by Twitter appear to reduce the spread of a tweet.
In one example from earlier this week, a Trump tweet that was hidden by Twitter was receiving hundreds of retweets and responses per minute before being flagged, according to data from the Election Integrity Partnership, a research group.
Tweets that are hidden behind a warning tag cannot be retweeted without a comment and cannot be liked.
“A critical function of our service is to provide a place where people can respond openly and publicly to their leaders and hold them accountable,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.
“With this in mind, there are certain instances where it may be in the public interest to have access to certain tweets, even if they would otherwise violate our rules.”
Trump has been arguably one of the most controversial and polarizing Twitter users of all time.
As president, he has often pushed the limits of acceptable speech on the platform, putting Twitter employees in the difficult position of deciding how to monitor such a visible user without facing censorship accusations.
Part of the company’s solution was its world leaders policy and what it calls a “public interest interstitial,” a warning label that hides offensive tweets and reduces their reach specifically for accounts managed by elected politicians and other world leaders. .
“He’s keeping a record of what is being said in the public interest,” Ms Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s lead attorney, said earlier this year.
That tool was inactive for months and wasn’t used on Trump until May.
San Francisco-based Twitter hid a tweet from Trump behind a warning screen after he posted “when the looting begins, the shooting begins,” a violation of the company’s policy against glorifying violence.
Since then, Twitter has flagged Trump’s tweets for rule violations more regularly, though company officials have never suspended or frozen his account.
If Biden prevails, it’s unclear what Trump’s Twitter feed will look like, or how the company will ultimately treat him as a private citizen.
His posts before his 2016 campaign included the same abrasive and controversial language they use today, but as an entrepreneur and reality TV star, he had far fewer followers – and less influence – than he gained once he became a presidential candidate.
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