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Why Twitter Hasn't Banned President Trump (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Amid vocal calls for the company to act, Twitter today offered its first explanation for why it hasn't banned President Donald Trump -- without ever saying the man's name. "Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society," the company said in a blog post. "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions." In its blog post, Twitter reiterated its previous statement that all accounts still must follow the company's rules. The statement seemed to leave open the possibility that it might one day take action against Trump's account, or the accounts of other world leaders who might use the platform to incite violence or otherwise break its rules. "We review Tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly," it said. In response to the claims that Twitter doesn't ban President Trump because he draws attention -- and ad revenue -- to the company, Twitter said: "No one person's account drives Twitter's growth, or influences these decisions. We work hard to remain unbiased with the public interest in mind."

2 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Because they are waffling on own standards by RedK · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can you link said tweet ? Of course you can't since he never threatened nuclear war.

    He just factually stated that the US nuclear arsenal is both functioning and bigger than a certain other country's which is both unproven and smaller.

    Stating facts is not a threat.

    --
    "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
    Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  2. Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    We have always been at war with Eastasia.

    Seriously, the one of the things that Donald Trump has been known for is racial divisiveness, going back decades.

    Perhaps Donald Trump's first claim to fame, when he was in his 20s in the 1970s, was being sued by DOJ for violations of the Fair Housing Act for discriminating against tenants on race. The infamous lawyer Roy Cohn was brought on for that case, and Trump launched a ridiculous $100 million counter suit.

    In 1989 there was the case of the Central Park Five, where 5 black and latino teens were accused and convicted of brutally raping a white woman in Central Park. In response, Trump ran full page ads in the NYC newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty for New York, referring to muggers and murderers and pretty clearly alluding to the Central Park Five for the cause of execution. Turns out that those black and latino teenagers were railroaded, the police extracted false confessions, and they were wrongly convicted, as confirmed 14 years later by DNA evidence and the capture of the actual rapist, Matias Reyes. Of course, Trump never backed down when confronted more recently with the truth that the political crusade of his earlier years was tainted by false convictions heavily bogged down by racial undertones, and refused to even accept that the Central Park Five were wrongly convicted.

    Then there is Trump's more recent claim to fame as being the main champion of the utterly ridiculous conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not actually born in America but Kenya instead and thus was an illegitimate president. If I have to try to walk through the racism pouring through that hogwash, then it really isn't worth bothering because you won't read it anyway. Especially when you consider that Obama's original presidential rival, John McCain, literally was not born in any of the States proper within the United States, but rather the Panama Canal Zone, where his Navy Officer father was stationed. There was never any serious movement to consider McCain an illegitimate presidential candidate on the grounds of not being a naturally born American, despite the circumstances of McCain's birth being on much less clear legal grounds than those of Obama.

    Do note that none of this includes the racial issues surrounding Trump in his more recent political run and what he has done as president.

    And for a kicker, Fred Trump, Donald's father, was arrested after a KKK riot in Queens in 1927.