Trump finally crosses line for Twitter
OAKLAND, Calif. — Jack Dorsey was up late Thursday at his home in San Francisco talking online with his executives when their conversation was interrupted: President Donald Trump had just posted another inflammatory message on Twitter.
Tensions between Twitter, where Dorsey is chief executive, and Trump had been running high for days over the president’s aggressive tweets and the company’s decision to begin labeling some of them. In his latest message, Trump weighed in on the clashes between the police and protesters in Minneapolis, saying, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
A group of more than 10 Twitter officials, including lawyers and policymakers, quickly gathered virtually to review Trump’s post and debate whether it pushed people toward violence.
They soon came to a conclusion. And after midnight, Dorsey gave his go-ahead: Twitter would hide Trump’s tweet behind a warning label that said the message violated its policy against glorifying violence. It was the first time Twitter applied that specific warning to any public figure’s tweets.
The action has prompted a broad fight over whether and how social media companies should be held responsible for what appears on their sites, and was the culmination of months of debate inside Twitter. For more than a year, the company had been building an infrastructure to limit the impact of objectionable messages from world leaders, creating rules on what would and would not be allowed and designing a plan for when Trump inevitably broke them.
But the path to that point was not smooth. Inside Twitter, dealing with Trump’s tweets — which are the equivalent of a presidential megaphone — was a fitful and uneven process. Some executives repeatedly urged Dorsey to take action on the inflammatory posts while others insisted he hold back, staying hands-off as the company had done for years.
Outside Twitter, the president’s critics urged the company to shut him down as he pushed the limits with insults and untruths, noting ordinary users were sometimes suspended for lesser transgressions. But Twitter argued that posts by Trump and other world leaders deserved special leeway because of their news value.
Now Twitter is at war with Trump over its treatment of his posts, which has implications for the future of speech on social media. In the past week, the company for the first time added fact-checking and other warning labels to three of Trump’s messages, refuting their accuracy or marking them as inappropriate.
In response, an irate Trump issued an executive order designed to limit legal protections that tech companies enjoy and posted more angry messages.
Trump said on Twitter that his recent statements were “very simple” and that “nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media.”
The White House declined to comment.