Twitter said Thursday it would introduce a new feature that could mask President Trump’s or other public officials’ tweets with a warning label if they violate their terms of service.
In a statement, the social media company said “in the past, we’ve allowed certain Tweets that violated our rules to remain on Twitter because they were in the public’s interest, but it wasn’t clear when and how we made those determinations. To fix that, we’re introducing a new notice that will provide additional clarity in these situations, and sharing more on when and why we’ll use it.”
“There are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules. On the rare occasions when this happens, we’ll place a notice — a screen you have to click or tap through before you see the Tweet — to provide additional context and clarity,” Twitter said.
“We’ll also take steps to make sure the Tweet is not algorithmically elevated on our service, to strike the right balance between enabling free expression, fostering accountability, and reducing the potential harm caused by these Tweets,” the company said.
Twitter doesn’t mention Mr. Trump’s name directly, but the first criteria for being eligible for the mask is “be or represent a government official.”
The filter won’t be put into effect on any profile that has fewer than 100,000 followers and isn’t verified.
With this new feature, Twitter could be trying to strike a middle ground between public officials and users criticizing the social media company for not adhering to its own content moderation rules.
This feature comes a day after Mr. Trump accused Twitter and other media companies of “trying to rig the election” against him, claiming they “make it very hard for people to join me in Twitter, and they make it very much harder for me to get out the message.”
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
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