Twitter has decided that President Donald Trump’s racist tweets telling certain non-white congresswomen to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came” don’t violate the platform’s rules on abuse.
A Twitter spokesperson told TPM on background that Trump wasn’t breaking Twitter’s rules when he attacked Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on the basis of their ethnicity over the weekend. The spokesperson did not explain how the company made its determination.
Twitter’s safety rules against “hateful conduct” state that users “may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
Additionally, Twitter recently unveiled a new flagging system where “abusive” tweets from high-profile politicians would be hidden by a notice informing users that the tweet they’re about to see violated the site’s terms of service.
The White House held a social media summit last week for Trump and other conservatives to complain about so-called “discrimination” and “censorship” against right-wing users. Twitter was not invited to the event.
