It’s no secret that President Trump — as a private citizen, a presidential candidate, and as president — has used Twitter to make outrageous, uncivil, and conspiratorial statements. But this has been true for years. Until this month, when Trump was permanently banned from the social network, the company had resisted the step, arguing that it had a policy against banning world leaders.
“Twitter is here to serve and help advance the global, public conversation,” the company announced in 2018. “Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society.”
The statement went on to explain that “blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
In taking the step not just to ban Trump but to restrict his access to the @POTUS account, Twitter broke with its own standard. In a statement, the network said that “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
If incitement to violence is the new metric, however, Twitter is going to have to explain why it has banned Trump and not other world leaders who have consistently and repeatedly incited violence.
For instance, an account attributed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, remains active despite being used to promote violence and anti-Semitism.
“#Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened,” one tweet from the account reads.
In another tweet, the account called for more terrorism against Israelis.
“The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth and a detriment to this region,” read another thread. “It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed. Then, the shame will fall on those who put their facilities at the service of normalization of relations with this regime.”
The thread went on to say that “my main advice is to continue this struggle & better organize anti-occupation organizations, cooperation & expand the areas of #Jihad inside Palestinian territories. Everyone must help the Palestinian fighters. We will proudly do everything in our power on this path.”
In addition to Iran, China has used its Twitter accounts for dangerous propaganda purposes. Tweeting last month, the Chinese Embassy in the United States used its account to claim that due to its policies, Uighur women were “emancipated” and experiencing “gender equality” because they were “no longer baby-making machines.”
This was quite a way to describe Chinese efforts to control its Muslim population through mass involuntary sterilization, IUDs, and forced abortions of Uighurs.
Though this particular tweet ended up being deleted following a public outcry, the account still lives, unlike Trump’s.
In another example of Twitter’s lack of self-awareness, the company put out a statement this month warning that “ahead of the Ugandan election, we’re hearing reports that Internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps.” It went on to say that “access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.”
This is laughable, considering that in the run-up to the 2020 election, Twitter took the draconian step of suspending the Twitter account of the New York Post, one of the nation’s oldest and largest newspapers, over its reporting on Hunter Biden and then blocked other users from even sharing the link to its story.
As a private social network, Twitter is within its legal rights to ban Trump, but the move is the culmination of its twisted logic and shifting goal posts. It speaks to the unseriousness and rank hypocrisy of the company.
