Donald Trump has a record of getting his controversial and misleading tweets flagged by Twitter. As the president of the United States, Trump has enjoyed certain privileges granted to him by the social media giant, which include Twitter not taking a seriously action against Trump and suspending or banning his account or even deleting his tweets. This is evident from his blatant violation of Twitter guidelines several times in the past.
The new president-elect of the US, Joe Biden will assume office on January 20, 2021, which means Trump has till January to get well versed with Twitter guidelines or else he will not be getting any special privileges that he has enjoyed as US’ president so far. Twitter’s public interest rules state, “current or potential members of a local, state, national, or supra-national governmental or legislative body are protected in the interest of public discourse”.
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Trump will lose his status as a “world leader” on Twitter. His tweets that would have otherwise been removed were kept on his profile but behind information cards to let users know they do not comply to the company’s rules. This also comes under the category of protecting public interest.
A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider, “A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable,”
“With this in mind, there are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules.”
“The policy applies to current world leaders and candidates for office, and not private citizens when they no longer hold these positions.” a spokesperson told The Verge.
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Twitter has been restricting several of Trump’s tweets since election day, putting block warnings on them that read “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” While some tweets are only fact-checked.
People were screaming STOP THE COUNT & WE DEMAND TRANSPARENCY (As Legal Observers were refused admittance to count rooms)! https://t.co/CW1tivI45c
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020
Trump’s misleading and unsubstantiated claims about the election has led The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and political watchdog Common Cause to write a letter to Twitter, requesting them to suspend his account for spreading misinformation and sabotaging election’s integrity.
Trump’s account will no longer be protected under these guidelines post January, and his account is very likely to get suspended if he does not adhere to the rules.
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