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Twitter Says it Will Label Tweets From Trump and Other Leaders That Break Its Rules (cnn.com) 473

Twitter plans to place a disclaimer on future tweets from world leaders that break its rules but which Twitter decides are in the "public interest," the company said in a blog post Thursday. From a report: This policy change could face its most prominent test in President Trump. Trump has repeatedly tested Twitter's community standards with his regular tirades on the platform and some of the president's tweets have run afoul of Twitter's rules. Twitter has in the past allowed tweets from Trump and other world leaders to remain online, even though they broke the company's rules, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN Business, because it believes the tweets are in the public interest.

But putting a disclaimer on one of Trump's tweets would almost certainly bring a firestorm of criticism down on Twitter's head. Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives. Such a disclaimer on a Trump tweet, even if he had clearly violated Twitter's rules, would provoke a new cycle of such complaints at a time when Washington is increasingly investigating Big Tech over concerns about antitrust and privacy.

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Twitter Says it Will Label Tweets From Trump and Other Leaders That Break Its Rules

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  • by mark_reh ( 2015546 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @11:51AM (#58835028) Journal

    which would be in the public interest, because we wouldn't want him abusing the office to attack a tech company.

    Quit dancing around that a-hole and call him out on every one of his lies, every time.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @03:57PM (#58836562)

      Quit dancing around that a-hole and call him out on every one of his lies, every time.

      Wouldn't it be simpler to simply black list him and manually point out the odd thing he says that is true?

  • Now Twitter users will have even more to fight and complain about as to whether or not each particular tweet should or shouldn't have this label and whether it's being applied unilaterally to everyone.
  • by Merk42 ( 1906718 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @11:52AM (#58835038)
    Until it's what I don't want!!
  • Double standards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @11:53AM (#58835046)

    "World leaders" and other sumbitches who run afoul of a forum's rules get flagged, ordinary plebs get banned...

  • Silly kids.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @11:55AM (#58835064)

    ...don't you know that the rules only apply to the little people?

  • As above so below (Score:4, Informative)

    by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @11:59AM (#58835090)

    And will all leaders have their posts flagged? Or will the new ruling follow the usual Twitter guidelines and flag only world leaders that do not follow the Twitter-approved political inclinations?

    Granted, I doubt anyone except Trump will be affected by this as all other Twitter-active world leaders fall in the IQ 100+ category.

  • Twitter should do this for everyone instead of banning, put warnings around aspects of a Tweet that break twitter guidelines.

    It is going to be HI-Larious to see what Twitter considers lies, and probably going to accelerate them losing the 230 protections.

    Twitter should corresponding let anyone submit feedback correcting Twitter allegations of lying or what have you, which would serve to quickly weed out truly bad moderation.

  • So powerful people get more leniency on a more powerful platform just because they're assholes. This will NOT end well.
    • Banning speech of politicians, even if it violates some rules, smacks of pushing a political position, which these companies don't wanna be accused of. It's a struggle to have their cake and eat it to, in the shadows.

  • And? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @12:11PM (#58835178)

    Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives.

    So what if they are; they're private companies / non-governmental organizations People can post somewhere else if they don't like it.

    And, I've also heard, "Reality has a liberal bias." -- Many People

    • That Reality has a liberal bias the end of joke poking fun at liberals, it has since then been used so that liberal can ignore the truth and their own ignorance.
      As for your first part they are private companies however they currently have protection under the law, 47 U.S.C. Â 230. That they are monitoring, modifying the content people post, and performing other action brings into question if they are exceeding the rights allowed under the law and if they should lose the protection they get from 47 U.
      • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        if they are exceeding the rights allowed under the law and if they should lose the protection they get from 47 U.S.C. [sec.] 230.

        Well, the right not to be treated as the "speaker" of posted content created solely by users is absolute (47 USC 230(c)(1) [cornell.edu]), so it's hard to exceed that one.

        And the right not to be liable for moderation decisions does require good faith (47 USC 230(c)(2) [cornell.edu]), but editorial judgments made by private, non-broadcasting entities are also protected by the first amendment [wikipedia.org], so they can be a

      • Enforcing their own ToS doesn't violate the law.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Censorship is exactly the opposite of what a liberal would support. You might want to re-think about what it is you stand for when you find yourself siding with fascists.

    • Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @12:50PM (#58835414)
      “The facts of life are conservative.” -- Margaret Thatcher
    • by RedK ( 112790 )

      Would you say a baker has a right to decide what he writes on cakes then ?

    • Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives.

      So what if they are; they're private companies / non-governmental organizations People can post somewhere else if they don't like it.

      And, I've also heard, "Reality has a liberal bias." -- Many People

      No one is saying they don't have a right*. But whether they do this or not is still of high interest.

      * Not true. Both parties want to change liabilty laws so as to harm companies that don't share their concept of speech, depending on the speech and era. How many of you defending Twitter's right defended Chick-fil-a when certain cities literally unconstitutionally tried to deny them licensing over their owner's hot air?

      (Crickets)

      I thought so. Fair weather friends of rights.

    • So what if they are; they're private companies / non-governmental organizations

      The big social media companies have a monopoly over political discourse. If they exercise biased moderation, they are effectively interfering with that discourse and potentially affecting the outcome of democratic processes. I hope you see the danger in that.

    • You can either be a "platform" or you're a "publisher". You can't have the cake and eat it too. If you're a platform, you're not responsible for the content users post. If you're a publisher (i.e. you actively decide what's being posted), you are.

      "Reality has conservative bias" -- also many people

  • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @12:29PM (#58835272)

    Twitter's plan is to score partisan internet snark cred for themselves, for the benefit of no one.

    Twenty years from now we will be talking about how Bay Area billionaire arrogance ended this era of Internet resurgence. Just like the bad old days at Microsoft, we will look back on a time when Google and Facebook and many other companies misused their power, how they lost out to less arrogant, more inventive rivals, and (for some) how the subsequent leaders took over from the arrogant jerks and righted the ship.

    • by sinij ( 911942 )

      Twenty years from now we will be talking about how Bay Area billionaire arrogance ended this era of Internet resurgence.

      This is overly optimistic view. I think it possible that thousand years from now we will be talking about how Western Technological Civilization collapsed and how it took so long to re-write all these burned books.

  • by Zorro ( 15797 )

    Now that they have started editing they have no more im munity.

  • They should also label posts, not just with the fact that they violate the site's terms of service, but with what disciplinary action could have been taken if one of of the "little people" had said the same thing. I mean, they should have banned Trump months if not years ago, but keeping a running count of the number of times he should have been banned is just about the next best thing.

    God help the poor people who have to review his stuff, though. Even if they only intend to review posts that get flagged by

  • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @12:55PM (#58835456)

    Look you guys.. IF you are granted immunity by Section 203, then you really cannot start acting like the news police. You've been granted immunity, I think you should not be filtering content beyond what would be filtered on a street corner. (I.E. profane content, inciting riots, and stuff like that.) So, anything you can say on a street corner, truth, lies, hate, political, religious and such all should be allowed, with the exceptions provided as matter of law (Which includes, removing libelous and copyrighted material when notified by the offended party). This is what SHOULD be happening on the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

    We all know THAT isn't going to happen, so I'm willing to accept it if social media platforms want to publish Objective criteria for posted content, then provide consistent enforcement of their own rules and provide content providers with the actual objective reasons their content has been removed and allow a public debate about the fairness of individual decisions.

    I remember the "Diamond and Silk" debacle and I'm aware of the consistently inconsistent application of policy by U-Tube/Google, including the latest Project VERITAS exposé of Google, and I'm starting to feel like these various platforms are not opposed to being biased while trying to claim they are not.

    Oh, and by the way...The above story is wrong, there IS actual evidence of bias here. There may not be convincing proof for some and you can try and argue they are trying to be fair (in as much as they see it), but there IS evidence of continued bias if one is honest about this.

  • by Java Pimp ( 98454 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @01:09PM (#58835570) Homepage

    His Twitter Tantrums are an embarrassment.

    I don't care what party you represent. Just act like a grown-up...

  • "Bias" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @02:18PM (#58836034)

    Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives.

    I'm so tired of this claim.

    The "bias" is against LIES. If "conservatives" like Republicans and Trump spoke truths - Instead of tweeting out lie after lie - They wouldn't have this problem.

  • So Trump is allowed to violate their Terms of Service at will, but if I do it, my account gets suspended? Yep, sounds fair to me!
  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @04:11PM (#58836620)
    Twitter should do what Twitter says it will do if people break the rules regardless of who they are. If they do anything else they're untrustworthy.

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