After Trump loses his Presidency it will end his privileged protected Twitter status. As reported by Tech Radar, Twitter has long since admitted that Trump is governed by different rules to the rest of us. However, that will all come to an end when he gives up his seat in the Whitehouse.
Trump’s actions on the platform have put Twitter in a difficult position over his presidency. Most notably in recent weeks when the platform had to label a number of the President’s tweets. This came is it emerged the company labelled 1 in 500 tweets on the topic of the election.
Twitter did outline how it would aim to tackle election result misinformation on the platform. The company said that it would remove or label any tweets prematurely in falsely claiming victory.
Now it looks like Trump will lose the Presidency and with it his Twitter protected status, it may not take long for the company to take action against his account. It is fairly well established that if Trump was not the President he would have found himself banned from the platform.
Trump set to lose Twitter protected status
Over the last few months, Trump has found a number of his tweets labelled for misinformation as Twitter looked to step up its efforts. Moderation efforts have slowed a touch since the election. However, Trump has still found himself on the wrong end of the platform’s policies.
No one is 100% certain on exactly what Trump losing his protected status could mean. However, CEO Jack Dorsey did say that Trump would not have the same protections as he once did.
It is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that Trump could be subject to a ban or suspension. Once the President’s account is no longer a source of public record his content becomes much more questionable.
Twitter offered the following statement on the issue to try and explain the situation. “A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable. With this in mind, 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.”
The next few months could be extremely interesting for a number of reasons. Least of all watching the fall out from the Trump Presidency. Especially if companies like Twitter become willing to take more decisive action against the President.