Twitter has once again slapped a warning notice on a tweet by US President Donald Trump, stating that it violated the company policy on abusive behaviour, by threatening protesters in the country to face ‘serious force’.
His tweet referred to the anti-racism protesters, who on Monday, declared a Seattle area in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House, as a ‘Black House Autonomous Zone’, in view of the ongoing protests over the killing of African-American man George Floyd.
‘There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!’ the president said in his tweet, that has now been hidden.
We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group.https://t.co/AcmW6O6d4t
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) June 23, 2020
The company said that the tweet included a threat against an identifiable group. Once the label is imposed, it restricts distribution of tweets in form of retweeting and commenting.
A Twitter spokeswoman informed the media that the teams within the company’s safety division took prior permission from Chief Executive Jack Dorsey before applying the notice.
The social network giant has earlier hid many tweets by Trump in less than a month for violating its policies, stating most of them glorified violence.
In May, Twitter had put a fact-check label on two of his tweets that made false claims about mail-in ballots in California, refuting inaccuracies in the posts.
A few days later, it hid another one of his posts and applied a warning in front of it, in which he called Minneapolis demonstrators ‘THUGS’ and said that if any difficulty is faced, they will assume control, ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!,’ it read.
Following the restrictions, Trump signed an executive order, stating that social media companies aren’t ‘neutral platforms,’ adding that Twitter becomes an ‘editor with a viewpoint’ when it bans accounts or takes down posts.
