Twitter Will Put Warning Labels On Rule-Breaking Trump Tweets

ByMichael Kan

If President Donald Trump or another world leader tweets something that breaks Twitter’s rules, the company plans on placing a warning over the content that will hide it from view until you click through it.

Twitter announced the new safeguard on Thursday, which will apply to all government officials and candidates running for office. The company named no world leader in particular, but the warning label is bound to affect tweets from President Trump, who routinely posts content that violates Twitter’s rules.

Up to this point, the company has taken no action. Last year, Twitter defended keeping Trump’s account online after the President made a veiled threat of nuclear war against North Korea in a tweet. Although the company has rules against abuse, including violent threats, Twitter will also protect tweets from world leaders when they’re found to be “newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.”

Not everyone has agreed with Twitter’s approach, to put it mildly. The company said it hopes to be more transparent about the process.

“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 in today’s blog post. “To fix that, we’re introducing a new notice that will provide additional clarity in these situations.”

Ironically, the new warning system might tempt curious users to click to see what was posted. However, the labels also have the power to prevent content from going viral. According to the company, tweets hit with the label will appear less prominently on Twitter’s default search function, in users’ timelins when switched to the “Top Tweets” mode, and over the notifications tab and explore section.

How Twitter determines which tweets deserve a warning label will be decided by five factors, including whether the posted content might incite violence and if preserving the tweet can hold the government official accountable.

“In instances where a Tweet violates our rules and our review doesn’t find that it would be in the public interest to leave it up, we will require the account owner to remove the tweet. Either way, this notice will make our decision-making clearer,” the company said.

The warning labels will only be applied to tweets sent out starting today, andTwitter expects to use them sparingly. But the measure probably won’t sit well with President Trump, who’s been accusing Twitter of censoring Republicans and threatening potential regulatory action against Silicon Valley companies.

“I have millions and millions of followers,” Trump said in a Fox Business interview on Wednesday. “But I will tell you, they make it very hard for people to join me in Twitter and they make it very much harder for me to get out the message.”

Source: PCMAG