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Last week, President Trump fired off a pair of tweets that suggested he was about to dispatch troops to Minneapolis, adding “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Twitter flagged the tweets for violating rules about glorifying violence but opted not to remove them because “it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
Would the social-media giant afford the same leeway to a mere commoner? Apparently not, if an experiment by @SuspendThePres is any indication.
Starting on May 29, the Twitter account began copying Trump’s tweets verbatim and reposting them in an effort to find out whether his words would also get a pass.
It didn’t take long for him to find out. Less than three days later, the account was temporarily suspended for glorifying violence — @BizzareLazar, who runs the @SuspendThePres account, shared several screen shots, saying it “took longer than expected.”
Here’s just one:
And yet, Trump’s tweet, complete with the warning, is still up:
Twitter told @SuspendThePres his 12-hour suspension would be lifted as long as he removed the offending tweet, so he did. Now he’s back at copying Trump’s tweets as the experiment continues.
“In a world leaders case, Twitter makes the argument that their content is important to be able be viewed regardless of its content to further national interest in the conversation,” the man behind the accounts told Mashable. “While I don’t disagree with that statement I feel we should also know if that content would otherwise violate a platforms [terms of service].”
He offered some more color on Twitter Wednesday morning:
