On Wednesday an executive from Twitter stated that the company is thinking about implementing a new option that will label tweets from politicians, including President Donald Trump, when they violate Twitter rules.
According to The Washington Post, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy, and trust and safety, said the company might start annotating offensive tweets from public figures with a message about why they remain up.
Twitter for a long time defended their position that public figures should remain up because they are “newsworthy,” even when they violate the company’s rules.
“One of the things we’re working really closely on with our product and engineering folks is, ‘How can we label that’?” Gadde said during the Post event.
“How can we put some context around it so people are aware that that content is actually a violation of our rules and it is serving a particular purpose in remaining on the platform?”
Gadde was responding to a question about whether Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants on Twitter.
“When we leave that content on the platform there’s no context around that and it just lives on Twitter and people can see it and they just assume that is the type of content or behavior that’s allowed by our rules,” Gadde said.
Because Trump has used Twitter to insult his enemies, as well as threatening with nuclear weapons, critics pushed Twitter to do something.
Gadde said the newsworthiness clause does not protect all tweets from a public figure.
“An example would be a direct violent threat against an individual that we wouldn’t leave on the platform because of the danger it poses to that individual,” Gadde said.
“But there are other types of content that we believe are newsworthy or in the public interest that people may want to have a conversation around,” she added.
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