Twitter explains why Trump can use site as venue for violence, hate

Announcement comes as social media is under pressure to remove hate-based accounts.

David Kravets – Sep 26, 2017 11:35 am | 419

Apparently, it's totally OK to take to Twitter and declare that you're going to attack an entire country or assassinate its leader. According to Twitter, that's true if you're US President Donald Trump, even if the tweets are a violation of the micro-blogging platform's terms of service.

Ever since Trump took office in January, the Internet has been wondering how San Francisco-based Twitter could allow the Tweeting President to routinely violate "The Twitter Rules." The latest dustup came when Trump called North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un a "Little Rocket Man" in reference to the country's nuclear ambitions.

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017

Facing criticism that Twitter's most popular tweeter had gone too far again, Twitter responded. The company said the president's tweet hadn't come down, and the president hasn't been banned because his tweets are newsworthy. Twitter said it is now unveiling a long-held "internal policy" and that it would "soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it."

Twitter's latest announcement comes as it and other social networks have been removing tens of thousands of accounts globally because of users violating content rules by promoting violence or hate.

Still, Twitter somehow managed to muster up a statement that it wasn't giving the president any special treatment, either. "We hold all accounts to the same Rules, and consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our Rules," Twitter tweeted from its Policy feed. "Among the considerations is 'newsworthiness' and whether a Tweet is of public interest."

In July, Twitter said that the president's @realDonaldTrump handle wasn't afforded an executive privilege. "The rules are the rules, we enforce them the same way for everybody." The company is just now being more forthcoming with its "newsworthiness" clause.

We've never seen a US president conduct foreign and domestic policy on such a massive and impulsive scale—in missives of 140-characters or less. Whether Twitter is the proper venue for such presidential affairs is another matter.

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