Twitter’s new warning label for tweets from government officials that break its rules never mentions President Trump by name.
Instead, it describes a narrow group of government officials whose posts may be left on the site even if they violate its policies, which ban behavior including harassment, election interference, and sharing private phone numbers, because being able to access the content is in the public’s interest.
In such cases, the San Francisco-based company said in a blog post, it will cover the tweet with a notice alerting users that the post violates company policies and offer them the option of looking anyway, if they want.
Television commentators immediately connected the policy with Trump, who has complained repeatedly that the platform is interfering with his reach even though he has 61 million followers. The president has used Twitter to bestow belittling nicknames on political opponents, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Nervous Nancy” and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as “SleepyCreepyJoe” as well as engage in nuclear one-upmanship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
He also fits neatly into the category of users Twitter says will be affected: people with government positions or seeking government office who have more than 100,000 followers and whose accounts have been verified, indicated by a check inside a blue badge.
Because of their positions, government leaders “have outsized influence and sometimes say things that could be considered controversial or invite debate and discussion,” Twitter executives wrote. “A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable.”
The new policy is unlikely to improve Trump’s relationship with Twitter, where he posts prolifically but has also aired his grievances in a private Oval Office meeting with CEO Jack Dorsey.
On Wednesday, the president complained in a telephone interview with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo that his Twitter following would be much larger but for the company’s hindrance.
“I have millions and millions of followers, but I will tell you they make it very hard for people to join me on Twitter; they make it very much harder for me to get out the message,” said Trump, whose following is the 12th-highest worldwide. “If I announced tomorrow that I was going to become a nice liberal Democrat, I would pick up five times more followers.”
Twitter has repeatedly denied such accusations, noting that workers attempt to keep the platform healthy by removing fake accounts employed to manipulate or harass users. That sometimes leads to smaller follower counts for prominent posters, the company has said, but boosts user confidence.
Trump and his allies in Congress say Twitter and its social media rivals, based in Silicon Valley, employ liberal workers who conspire to suppress conservative views, a point GOP lawmakers have made in a series of congressional hearings.
The accusations began when social media firms started flagging and removing phony accounts after the 2016 election. Some had been created by Russian operatives to sway voters in Trump’s favor, U.S. intelligence agencies said, and others were designed merely to fuel partisan conflict.
