Social media platform Twitter has hidden one of the tweets by US President Donald Trump from his profile for violating rules about glorifying violence.
Instead of deleting the post for violating rules about glorifying violence, Twitter replaced the Trump tweet with a warning which can be viewed upon clicking on it.
The warning reads: "Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible."
Twitter's decision to hide Trump's tweet is the latest in the squabble between the US president and the social media company. Just recently, the microblogging site placed a fact-check label on Trump's post about mail-in ballots.
The Hidden Tweet
Trump's latest tweets were about Minneapolis City, which has been the venue of consecutive nights of demonstrations following the death of a black man named George Floyd in police custody.
The president tweeted: "I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right....."
He follows this with the post hidden by Twitter, which reads: "....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
After Twitter hid the tweet, the official White House account re-posted the president's message but the social media company placed the same warning on it.
Carl Miller from the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at UK-based think-tank Demos, said: "This is the bravest and riskiest thing I've ever seen Twitter - or any social media giant - do."
"This pours rocket fuel over the online-harm-versus-free-speech debate. Online content policy doesn't get more incendiary than this," Miller added.
Fact-check Labels
Several days ago, President Trump was outraged after Twitter decided to place a fact-check label on his tweets about mail-in ballots.
The said tweets included false claims that the governor of California was sending out mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.”
Trump wrote: “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.”
They were labeled with a message urging users to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which was directly linked to a curated fact-checking page containing journalists and news article summaries debunking the claim.
In response to Twitter’s actions, Trump threatened to “strongly regulate” or even “close down” social media platforms. He claimed that Republicans felt the platforms “totally silence conservatives” and that he would not allow this to happen.
He earlier wrote that Twitter was “completely stifling free speech”. Later on Wednesday, he said the social media company “has now shown everything we have been saying about them… is correct” and vowed “big action to follow”.
Twitter chief executive officer (CEO) Jack Dorsey explained that placing fact-check labels on US President Donald Tump’s tweets does not make the company an "arbiter of truth".
The Twitter CEO wrote: "Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions."
