Twitter is refusing to judge a LeBron James tweet that some believe contained a veiled threat against the Ohio police officer who shot a 16-year-old black girl, saying the NBA superstar’s decision to delete the post left its hands tied.
“Our teams are unable to evaluate Tweets that have been deleted since they no longer exist on our service,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Thursday.
James tweeted a photo Wednesday of Ohio police officer Nicholas Reardon, who shot Ma’Khia Bryant after she charged at two people with a knife, with the caption, “YOU’RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY.” Although a video of the incident appears to show that Reardon stopped Bryant moments before she stabbed an unidentified female, James and others have questioned his actions.
James was hit with an eruption of criticism for “inciting violence” at a time when riots have reached a powder-keg situation across the country and questions on whether Twitter would take action. James subsequently deleted the tweet.
Twitter seemed to apply a different standard to President Donald Trump, who deleted his own tweets following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Trump was first temporarily, then permanently suspended for the deleted tweets, including one directing Capitol protesters to “go home, we love you, you are very special.” Twitter initially removed the tweets and issued a statement saying that Trump’s account “will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.” Trump complied with Twitter’s rules and deleted the tweets.
Two days later, Twitter announced that Trump was permanently banned from the platform to extinguish any threat of “further incitement of violence.”
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the statement read.
It added that “we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action” and then cited two tweets that broke the platform’s rules after the warning.
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James, one of the most famous athletes in the world, explained Wednesday evening that he deleted the controversial tweet because it was “being used to create more hate.”
“I’m so damn tired of seeing Black people killed by police. I took the tweet down because its being used to create more hate -This isn’t about one officer. it’s about the entire system and they always use our words to create more racism. I am so desperate for more ACCOUNTABILITY,” he said.
