President Trump had a busy weekend on Twitter, as usual. No real surprise there, but the language in at least one of his tweets generated enough user backlash to force the company to respond publicly on Monday about how its terms of service are applied.
When he wasn’t mad at NFL players for taking a knee during National Anthem protests, the president was busy escalating the rhetoric with North Korea and that country’s leader Kim Jung-un. Saturday night he essentially threatened to bomb the country out of existence.
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
The threat of nuclear war apparently was enough to spur some folks into reporting the tweet as abusive or harmful — a process which takes less than a minute via a series of questions provided by Twitter.
On Monday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — whose name will often receive a @jack mention when someone really wants to call attention to a hateful tweet — retweeted a six-tweet thread from the company’s @Policy feed — which serves as the voice of Twitter’s global public policy team, according to its bio.
The first @Policy tweet contained a link to an NPR story which contained the Trump tweet and described how, in the eyes of North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, Trump’s remarks amounted to a declaration of war. The @Policy folks said, “Some of you have been asking why we haven’t taken down the Tweet mentioned here.”
We’re putting significant effort into increasing our transparency as a company, and commit to meaningful and fast progress. Will do better. https://t.co/g1Rvkaj2sl
— jack (@jack) September 25, 2017
THREAD: Some of you have been asking why we haven't taken down the Tweet mentioned here: https://t.co/CecwG0qHmq 1/6
— Twitter PublicPolicy (@Policy) September 25, 2017
We hold all accounts to the same Rules, and consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our Rules 2/6
— Twitter PublicPolicy (@Policy) September 25, 2017
Among the considerations is “newsworthiness” and whether a Tweet is of public interest 3/6
— Twitter PublicPolicy (@Policy) September 25, 2017
This has long been internal policy and we’ll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it. We need to do better on this, and will 4/6
— Twitter PublicPolicy (@Policy) September 25, 2017
Twitter is committed to transparency and keeping people informed about what’s happening in the world 5/6
— Twitter PublicPolicy (@Policy) September 25, 2017
So in the end, at least according to the reading of those tweets, Twitter isn’t prepared to do anything about what that the president is tweeting — at North Korea, NFL players, Hillary Clinton, CNN or anyone else.
The company defends his actions as “newsworthy” and of “public interest.” Users responding on Twitter were not happy with what appeared to be inconsistencies when it comes to upholding its own TOS.
So someone can literally threaten to murder an entire country, as long as it’s newsworthy? Okay cool thanks for the clarification.
— Chris Coltrane ? (@chris_coltrane) September 25, 2017
So, the tweet could be a threat from Trump, but because he’s POTUS, it remains? Sounds inconsistent and biased.
— Mike Rana ✈️??? (@michaelranaii) September 25, 2017
It also completely contradicts their statement that they treat all accounts the same… disappointed @jack
— #TakeAKnee ?? (@williamlegate) September 25, 2017
Twitter: We treat all accounts the same
Also Twitter: We treat Trump differently because he’s more “newsworthy” than the common-folk ?— #TakeAKnee ?? (@williamlegate) September 25, 2017
When all is said and done, how complicit will twitter be?
— Comey is a Patriot (@comeyisapatriot) September 25, 2017