Time for Twitter to crack down on @RealDonaldTrump

CREDO
CREDO
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Twitter’s terms of service bans hateful conduct and making violent threats.

If threatening nuclear war — as Donald Trump did in a recent tweet — does not count, we don’t know what does.

Trump recently tweeted:

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

Twitter’s terms of service explicitly provide:

Like many other Trump tweets, this one clearly violated Twitter’s rules and policies against hateful conduct and violent threats.2Trump has also repeatedly emboldened violent white supremacists on Twitter, sharing their memes and retweeting their posts to millions of followers. His active promotion of hate mongers helped create the violent atmosphere of racist hate that led to a white supremacist killing a woman with his car in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Just days after the white supremacist violence in Virginia, Trump tweeted and then deleted a cartoon depicting a train hitting a CNN reporter. While the White House later claimed that it was tweeted inadvertently, it was not the first time Trump has used his Twitter account to encourage violence targeting the media.

Twitter’s coddling of Donald Trump could have deadly consequences. Trump has a history of setting official government policy via tweet. If he spouts off without thinking, makes a disastrous typo — or, worst of all, if his account were to be hacked — the result could be nuclear war.

Despite the possible repercussions and Trump’s repeated violations, Twitter has yet to act. It is not too much to ask for Twitter to ensure that White House staff verify any Trump tweets before they are posted. Or, Twitter could stop coddling white supremacists and authoritarians and follow through on its own terms of service by revoking Trump’s account.

Donald Trump has used his Twitter account to wreak havoc on enemies real and imagined. He has directed armies of internet trolls against journalists, public figures and anyone who draws his ire. His tweets about government policy have caused multibillion dollar changes in the market caps of major corporations. A few weeks ago, he sent a series of tweets announcing a decision to ban transgender Americans from the military despite not having consulted with the military first.

If his account tweeted that he had ordered a military strike — whether it was from his own thumbs or because the account had been hacked — countless American lives could be lost before cooler heads prevail. Twitter has more than enough reason to revoke Trump’s account based on its own rules. It must either do so or institute immediate safeguards, or all of us could pay the price.


Originally published at act.credoaction.com.

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