Well, would you look at that: Tweeting the same stuff as Trump gets you suspended
Every day, Twitter suspends or bans accounts due to all manner of violations, from harassment to threat of physical violence to hate speech. Donald Trump has repeatedly engaged in all three, but—for some strange reason—hasn’t suffered nearly any of the same repercussions. Well, earlier this week, someone on Twitter decided to try out a little experiment: Would Twitter suspend the average user for saying the same threatening, vaguely violent shit as our president? And surprise of surprises: Yes, they would.
@SuspendThePres’ post of Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” missive from a few days back earned the account a 12-hour suspension and a mandate to delete the offending tweet. Trump, meanwhile, merely saw a “public interest” warning label slapped on his eloquent ode to fascistic street justice, itself a huge step for the social media platform. The tweet remained on the site, though.
The man behind @SuspendThePres himself went on to mention that it’s another argument entirely as to whether or not “public interest” includes the President of the United States tacitly endorsing violence, and that his experiment was mainly to highlight most social media platforms’ chronically inconsistent moderation methods.
Maybe someone should set up a SuspendThePres Snapchat account next, just to really test out this scientific study.
Send Great Job, Internet tips to [email protected]