Twitter indicated Tuesday elected officials have broad power to make statements on the platform without consequence, even if their tweets appear to run afoul of the company’s policies.
The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post that while world leaders are supposed to follow Twitter’s rules, tweets from elected officials that seem to violate its policies will not be removed if there is a “clear public interest value” in keeping it online. Posts that break the platform’s rules, however, may include a notice informing viewers of the violation, Twitter said.
“Presently, direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues are generally not in violation of the Twitter rules,” the social media giant said.
Twitter’s efforts to explain its approach to dealing with world leaders on the platform come after Sen. Kamala Harris, a presidential candidate, called on the company to suspend President Trump’s account.
The California Democrat specifically took issue with a series of tweets from Trump criticizing the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint to the Intelligence Community inspector general was the catalyst for House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry against him.
Harris said Trump’s tweets “put people at risk and our democracy in danger.”
She reiterated her call for Twitter to boot the president from the platform during Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, during which she tried to rally support among her fellow Democratic candidates for the company to suspend Trump’s account.
“Here we have Donald Trump, who has 65 million Twitter followers and is using that platform as the president of the United States to openly intimidate witnesses, to threaten witnesses, to obstruct justice, and he and his account should be taken down,” she said.
Twitter said it will take action against any account that promotes terrorism or self-harm, makes clear threats of violence against a person, and posts private information or intimate photos or videos. But the company will not “attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”
In many instances involving the content posted by a world leader, Twitter said it “will err on the side of leaving the content up if there is a clear public interest in doing so.”
