Twitter added multiple warnings and tags to @realDonaldTrump tweets (file)
U.S. President Donald Trump will be subject to the same Twitter Inc rules as any other user when President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, the social media company confirmed this week.
Twitter places “public interest” notices on certain tweets that violate “world leaders” rules that would otherwise be deleted. Instead, these tweets from political candidates and elected or government officials are obscured by a warning, and Twitter is taking steps to narrow their reach.
But the company said that treatment does not apply to former office holders.
“This policy framework applies to current world leaders and candidates for office, not to private citizens when they no longer hold those positions,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.
He added several warnings and tags to the @realDonaldTrump account’s tweets, many from Tuesday’s election that made unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. He first hid one of his tweets behind a “public interest” tag in May when the president violated company policy against glorifying violence.
According to Facebook Inc’s policies, it appears that after Biden took office in January, Trump’s posts would no longer be exempt from scrutiny by Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners.
Facebook’s online policy says it defines politicians, whose posts are free from fact-checking, as election candidates, current office holders and many of their cabinet-appointed members, as well as parties politicians and their leaders.
He says that “former candidates or former public servants continue to be covered by our third party fact-checking program.”
Facebook did not respond to questions from Reuters on how it would treat Trump’s account.
Biden’s victory on Saturday in Pennsylvania put the Democratic presidential candidate above the threshold of 270 electoral college votes needed to clinch the presidency. Republican Trump did not concede and promised to challenge the result in court.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
