Twitter is going to start “hiding” tweets with warning labels that it says violate its terms of service but that it feels a responsibility to keep public:
YAHOO NEWS – Starting Thursday, tweets that Twitter deems to involve matters of public interest, but which violate the service’s rules, will be obscured by a warning explaining the violation and Twitter’s reasons for publishing it anyway. Users will have to tap through the warning to see the underlying message.
Twitter said the new policy applies to all government officials, candidates, and similar public figures with more than 100,000 followers.
I don’t think this isn’t going to go over well at all.
Note that this new policy applies to government officials with more than 100k followers – which leads the AP (author of this article) to conclude that this will happen to Trump. Wny? Because liberals have been trying to get Trump silenced for years and this is Twitter’s way of pacifying them:
The new stance could fuel additional Trumpian ire toward social media. The president routinely complains, without evidence, that social media sites are biased against him and other conservatives.
Twitter’s rules prohibit threatening violence against a person or group, engaging in “targeted harassment of someone,” or inciting others to do so, such as wishing a person is harmed. It prohibits hate speech against a group based on race, ethnicity, gender or other categories, and disallows the threatening or promoting of terrorism.
The company has long exempted public figures from many of its usual rules, contending that publishing controversial tweets from politicians encourages discussion and helps hold leaders accountable .
But there have been longstanding calls to remove Trump from the service for what activists and others have said is abusive and threatening behavior. This week, for example, the president posted that an attack by Iran “will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”
Oh come on. That tweet doesn’t fall under any of these rules. Trump is sending a warning to an enemy country who had just attacked one of our drones over international waters.
Trump has used Twitter to attack his enemies, issuing many tweets that may violate these policies, including calling a former staffer a “lowlife” and “dog,” tweeting a video of himself beating up a man with a CNN logo replacing his head, and retweeting seemingly faked, inflammatory anti-Muslim videos.
Twitter’s new policy doesn’t apply to past tweets.
Twitter said it is still possible for a government official or other figure to tweet something so egregious that it warrants removal. A direct threat of violence against an individual, for instance, would qualify.
Twitter says they will have a specific group who decides what tweets need to have a warning label:
The company said warning-label decisions will be made by a group that includes members of its trust and safety, legal and public policy teams, as well as employees in the regions where particular tweets originate.
When a tweet gets such a notice placed on it, Twitter said it will not appear in the site’s “safe search” mode, notifications tab, the explore section and other places Twitter promotes or highlights tweets.
So this isn’t just a warning label. It’s censorship, at least on some levels. Just like YouTube prevents some videos form showing up in their searches, now Twitter is going to do the same.
We’ll see how fair they are in doling out these new warnings, but don’t fault me for expecting the worst. Conservatives are under attack right now by big tech and Twitter has been doing their part in this attack for years. Just ask Lila Rose.