Twitter won’t censor Trump’s rule-breaking tweets, but it will make them harder to find

Tweets from world leaders that would ordinarily break Twitter’s rules but are kept up because they are considered newsworthy — such as attacks from President Donald Trump — are about to get harder to see.

On Thursday, Twitter announced a new policy that tries to strike a balance on a question that has long vexed the platform: How can it protect free speech rights and ensure citizens can see world leaders’ tweets that are of public interest, while also making Twitter a safer place for dialogue? Those goals can come into sharp conflict when world leaders use Twitter to bully or threaten others.

If it sounds like we’re talking about Donald Trump, it’s because we’re talking about Donald Trump.

Trump’s Twitter provocations have caused critics to call on Twitter to enforce its policies when his tweets violate them, but the company has consistently declined to do that. In September 2017, for instance, Trump tweeted that North Korea “won’t be around much longer!” as tensions escalated and some feared a possible military conflict between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korea’s foreign minister responded at the time by saying Trump’s post was a “clear declaration of war.”

Twitter said back then that it had to hold all accounts, including Trump’s, to the “same rules,” but that “among the considerations is ‘newsworthiness’ and whether a Tweet is of public interest.” Because Trump’s tweets were, in Twitter’s view, of public interest, the company left them online.

But Twitter’s new official policy means a tweet like that should encounter some new regulations, even if not outright removal.

Now, something like this will appear.

“There are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules,” Twitter said in a blog post. “On the rare occasions when this happens, we’ll place a notice — a screen you have to click or tap through before you see the Tweet — to provide additional context and clarity.”

Twitter said this type of notice would only appear on offending content that comes from a government official or political figure who is verified and has more than 100,000 followers, but the policy won’t apply retroactively. These tweets would also be featured less frequently on the platform, Twitter said, and not appear in places like your Notifications or Explore tabs.

And it said that more extreme provocations, such as a direct incitement to violence, would still come down — even if it came from one of these public figures.

Twitter’s decision will inevitably encourage criticism — particularly from the right — that it is silencing speech from a democratically elected president of the United States. Some free-speech advocates have expressed concern with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, arguing (with little hard evidence) that Dorsey and his team have designed the platform with a biased intent to muzzle them.

As of Thursday morning, Trump has yet to weigh in on Twitter’s announcement.

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