Some of President Trump’s tweets may soon come with a trigger warning.
In a move that looked like it was at least partly targeting the president, Twitter said on Thursday it will begin flagging tweets from political figures that violate its rules on “abusive behavior.”
The new warning label — which flags bullying, harassment, or threats of violence or terrorism — may be applied to a tweet by any politician with a verification badge, as well as any government official worldwide with more than 100,000 followers, Twitter said.
Beginning Thursday, flagged tweets will first be concealed, and users will have to click past a statement that says, “The Twitter Rules about abusive behavior apply to this Tweet. However, Twitter has determined it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain available.”
Tweets that violate Twitter’s rules will also be deprioritized by Twitter’s feed, meaning they will end up in front of fewer eyeballs.
Twitter says the label will only be used on “rare” occasions when a tweet egregiously violates its policies.
Trump has rattled nerves with his sometimes aggressive tweets toward other world leaders, particularly those of Iran and North Korea.
Last year, he taunted Kim Jong Un as “little Rocket Man” and warned him that he has a nuclear button that “is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
Last July, Trump tweeted a roughly edited video of himself in a WWE ring punching a wrestler labeled “CNN” — a segment that the left-leaning network complained “encourages violence against reporters.”
Twitter has previously rebuffed demands to yank Trump’s Twitter account, noting that the tweets were newsworthy.
“In the past, we’ve allowed certain tweets that violated our rules to remain on Twitter because they were in the public’s interest, but it wasn’t clear when and how we made those determinations,” the company said Thursday.
“To fix that, we’re introducing a new notice that will provide additional clarity in these situations, and sharing more on when and why we’ll use it.”
Twitter’s new policy is likely to draw the ire of Trump, who previously has accused his favorite social network of “bias,” claiming it had “removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join.”
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey made a trip to the White House in April to meet the president and discuss his concerns, saying that the amount of followers can fluctuate as Twitter purges spam accounts.
Shares of Twitter were flat Thursday afternoon at $35.26.
Source: Read Full Article