Twitter — the social media corporation — seems to take obligations to the public interest more seriously than many Republican members of Congress who refuse to condemn the president’s behavior. After placing a small but significant number of notices on previous Trump tweets informing the public that the posts violated the platform’s rules, Twitter has now placed another notice on another one of the president’s tweets indicating that the post violates platform rules. In this particular case, Twitter has placed a rule violation notice on a Tuesday post in which Trump appeared to preemptively threaten violence against peaceful protesters who may gather in Washington, D.C. Twitter said the post violated its policy against “abusive behavior.”
In the original post, Trump says:
‘There will never be an “Autonomous Zone” in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your president. If they try, they will be met with serious force!’
Twitters has placed a "public interest notice" on this Trump tweet. pic.twitter.com/wgz5GffXmA
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 23, 2020
Trump’s reference to an “autonomous zone” refers to a small area that peaceful protesters in Seattle set up, which they called the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.” The area is, compared to the overall size of the city of Seattle, very small, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from trumpeting the conspiracy theory that the city has been taken over. Seattle has not, however, been taken over, by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, the president is now using his made-up conspiracy theory as justification for appearing to threaten violence against peaceful protesters.
Twitter has previously marked Trump tweets including posts that included lies about mail-in voting and seemingly threatened violence against other protesters before the ones that the president is now targeting. Throughout nationwide protests against police brutality, Trump has repeatedly threatened the largely peaceful protesters with violence — he’s repeatedly threatened to send the military into the streets of the U.S., for example. Trump has already raged when Twitter has previously marked his tweets for violating platform rules. He signed an executive order that aimed to remove liability protections for social media companies and “would open the door for the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission to reinterpret the law and allow the Federal Trade Commission to create a tool for users to report bias online,” The Verge reports.
