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Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

(twitter.com)
1061 points danso | 2 comments | 29 May 20 07:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.425s | source
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partiallypro ◴[29 May 20 15:16 UTC] No.23350905[source]▶
Twitter is well within the rights to do this, but I have seen tweets from blue check marks essentially calling for violence and Twitter didn't remove them. So, does that mean Twitter actually -supports- those view points now? If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. Otherwise it's just a weird censorship that is targeting one person and can easily be seen as political.

Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.

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kingnight ◴[29 May 20 15:25 UTC] No.23351063[source]▶
The valley being an echo chamber doesn’t necessarily mean those implementing this have their heads in the sand.

It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.

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sevenf0ur ◴[29 May 20 15:30 UTC] No.23351131[source]▶
The issue is that the rules are being enforced selectively. Just this week Twitter fact checked Trump's opinion on mail voter fraud by linking to other experts' opinions. It seems more like a move to influence the election rather than enforcing the rules.
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1. charwalker ◴[29 May 20 15:44 UTC] No.23351337[source]▶
They are finally stepping up and enforcing their ToS. I can see this response as a followup to the EIO signed yesterday as an example of what they might have to do if the interpretation of existing law is changed and platforms become liable for content they host. Like, that would induce harsher restrictions on posting and modding content though it would be complicated if that also made twitter a publisher. Their model may no longer be viable at that point as they could be sued for leaving up violent or misleading content AND sued as a publisher for what they take down.

It's within their rights to do take these actions, fact checks and hiding/deleting tweets, to protect their ecosystem. If it is questionably legal because it may influence the election, then I haven't seen the law it is breaking. I see a better argument for showing Twitter promoting Trump's feed to drive clicks as an in kind donation which could quickly break legal campaign donation limits.

Twitter has taken a stand here and I do think they should apply their policies evenly. Will they effectively apply this to everything or even have the capacity built out now to do so? I doubt it. They are a business who needs user engagement to drive profit from ads. If they constrain their most clicked tweets it could lower their revenue even if initially those tweets get attention for being removed.

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2. koheripbal ◴[29 May 20 16:01 UTC] No.23351603[source]▶
This is a policy they enacted last year. Can you cite any other examples of them using it?