Donald Trump to lose Twitter protections after Joe Biden becomes US President
Not all accounts on social media are treated equally, and that could be bad news for Donald Trump when he exits the White House.
Twitter has confirmed US President Donald Trump will lose the public interest protections that prevent his account or posts being banned or deleted when he leaves office.
The company confirmed to The Verge and Engadget that its public interest policy only applies to “current world leaders and candidates for office, and not private citizens when they no longer hold these positions”.
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Official accounts like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, and @WhiteHouse will transfer to the next administration and will still be protected.
Donald Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account will lose its protection when he leaves office.
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Whether Twitter takes immediate, retroactive action for past policy violations or gives Donald Trump the private citizen a chance on its platform remains to be seen.
The company’s public interest policy was brought in last year, formalising the process and “ensuring our rules and how we enforce them are easy to understand,” Twitter said in a blog post at the time.
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Prior to the policy being officially brought in, Twitter had been allowing certain tweets to remain online even though they violated the platform’s rules, which the company said was because the tweets were in the public interest and its users should be able to see for themselves what their elected officials were saying.
But Twitter noted, “it wasn’t clear when and how we made those determinations”, prompting the company to bring in a click-through notice “to provide additional context and clarity”.
It was first used on a post from Donald Trump in May after he tweeted about mail-in ballots and claimed they would lead to fraud.
Mr Trump is now using legal challenges against mail voting to try to keep his re-election bid alive, even though Joe Biden has claimed victory and is set to become president on January 20, 2021.
The previous Twitter action prompted an outburst from Mr Trump, who then issued an executive order to review Section 230 of the US’ Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity to websites like social media platforms for the content that users post on it. Mr Trump argued that should also mean social media platforms shouldn’t get to police what people post either.
The review has been completed and reforms have been proposed but are yet to be voted on by Congress.
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