Twitter affixed a tag to another of President Donald Trump’s tweets on Tuesday, concluding that it violated his “abusive behavior” rules.
Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted that “there will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, DC, as long as I am its President. If they try, they will meet serious force!
That was a reference to the protests that took place on Monday night in Lafayette Square Park near the White House, when park police stopped protesters from knocking down a statue of Andrew Jackson and someone painted the letters “BHAZ “in the columns of the Church of San Juan. That means Black House Autonomous Zone, a variation on a section of Seattle that has been taken over by protesters.
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The tweet remains, but users must first click on the Twitter message before accessing it.
“We have posted a public interest notice in this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group,” said a company spokesperson.
The tweet remains on the platform “given its relevance to the ongoing public conversation.” Users will be able to retweet it with comments, but will not be able to “like”, “reply” or simply retweet it.
Twitter later linked to its policies on how they handle the accounts of world leaders. The policy says that users cannot want or expect serious harm against a person or a group of people. In this case, according to Twitter, it was the threat of violence against people who were trying to organize.
Twitter first placed a tag on Trump’s tweets on May 26, when he determined that two of his posts about voting by mail required fact-checking links.
That sparked a protest by Trump and his supporters, who have long complained that Silicon Valley platforms are biased against conservative voices. It issued an executive order aimed at removing the legal immunity social media sites enjoy for third-party content, although there is considerable doubt that such a change to the law can be made without an act of Congress.
