Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Trump tweet has ‘glorified violence’
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump raged against Twitter yesterday after the social media company added a warning label to a tweet he in the middle of the night implying that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot, escalating tensions between the president and his favourite online megaphone.
The company said Trump’s original post violated its rules against glorifying violence and it prevented users from viewing the tweet without reading a brief notice, the first time it has restricted one of the president’s messages in this way.
Twitter blocked users from liking or replying to Trump’s post, although they were still allowed to retweet it if they added a comment of their own.
But it did not take the tweet down, saying it was in the public’s interest that the message remain accessible.
In the tweet, posted early yesterday, Trump called the protesters “thugs” and said he had told Minnesota’s governor that the military was “with him all the way”. “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,”
Trump wrote. “Thank you!”
Twitter’s decision came a day after Trump signed an executive order that seeks to limit the legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields social media companies from liability for the content posted on their platforms.
Trump had fulminated over Twitter’s decision earlier this week to add fact-checking labels for the first time to two of his tweets.
In response, he accused Twitter of stifling speech and said that he would end the interference. |