Politics

Twitter Has Explained Why It Won’t Be Banning Donald Trump

Sorry everyone.

by Tom Clift  6 January 2018
donald trump twitter

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Don’t expect to see Donald Trump kicked off Twitter any time soon. Faced with growing calls to delete the President’s account before he’s goaded into starting a nuclear war, the social media company has released a statement outlining its policy on world leaders’ use of the platform. And sure, they don’t actually mention Trump by name, but it’s pretty bloody clear who they’re talking about.

“Twitter is here to serve and help advance the global, public conversation,” read the statement posted to the company’s blog on Friday. “Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society. Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”

A spokesperson for the company previously claimed that they apply their rules “the same way for everybody”. It would appear as though that policy has changed.

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Twitter didn’t rule out the possibility of kicking Trump to the curb in the future, claiming that world leaders are still required to follow the platform’s terms of service. “We review tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly,” the blog post reads.

They also attempted to downplay the suggestion that people like Trump are allowed to stay because they’re good for the platform’s profile, claiming that “no one person’s account drives Twitter’s growth, or influences these decisions.”

Of course there’s a solid argument to be made that Trump has already violated the platform’s terms of service plenty of times in the past. For example, you’d think that threatening to nuke a country would fall under the banner of a violent threat.