U.S. President Trump does not have immunity against a Twitter ban if his communication on the platform becomes abusive, according to Vijaya Gadde, the social media giant’s Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead. In an interview with Politico that also included Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, the official explained that the microblogging platform isn’t enforcing its policy based on any individual’s beliefs and is instead trying to find a balance between maintaining the openness of its platform and protecting its users from abusing it.
Twitter repeatedly said world leaders like President Trump have more leeway in regards to how they express themselves, even if their communication becomes more aggressive. The head of the state isn’t convinced he or his political allies receive special treatment from Twitter that’s beneficial to their efforts to communicate with their constituents and the rest of the world, having repeatedly argued the San Francisco-based company silences conservative voices on its platform. The President went as far as to openly threaten Twitter based on those allegations, accusing it of “illegal” behavior on several occasions, though without elaborating on the matter.
Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday largely reiterated the President’s concerns about a left-leaning bias affecting social media policies of American companies, with that notion being repeatedly dismissed by the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Mr. Dorsey is scheduled to attend a congressional hearing related to some of those allegations later today and has also used the Politico interview as an opportunity to express befuddlement with the fact that U.S. conservatives keep claiming they are being censored from the Internet. Twitter, for its part, will try to do a better job at explaining its core principles and policies applied to all users, regardless of their political beliefs, the CEO promised. Facebook previously made similar vows, dismissing any possibility of systematically censoring content.