- Trump’s Twitter privileges may be significantly reduced if he loses the election, according to Twitter’s policies.
- He has repeatedly violated their ‘public interest’ policies in the last week, leading to multiple misinformation flags being tagged onto his tweets.
- If he no longer holds the office, Trump will not be protected by the “world leader” Twitter exemption and may face more strict Twitter regulation for misinformation or incitement, including outright suspension or removal.
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As the votes are being counted in key final states, President Donald Trump has continued to spread disinformation about the legal ballot-counting process at press conferences and on Twitter.
In recent days, social media platform Twitter has recently issued “misleading” and “disputed” flags on several of the president’s tweets about the election being stolen. The president has repeatedly violated Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy, which states that users “may not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.”
However, if Trump were to leave office, his Twitter account could be much more highly regulated, and he could even face suspension or removal, according to Twitter’s policies.
This is because his tweets would no longer qualify under their “world leader” exemptions and his tweets may be deemed to be outside Twitter’s terms of public interest.
Trump’s latest tweets about the electoral process have been flagged but not removed, as Twitter has determined that it is in the interest of the public discourse to keep them up.
For Trump, both policies have worked in tandem to protect the president from outright suspension.
In a statement to Business Insider, Twitter added that for an account to be considered in the public interest, the user must fit three criteria: they must be a government/elected official or someone running for office, have over 100,000 followers, and be verified.
A spokesperson for Twitter also told Business Insider that "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."
Trump's Twitter account currently qualifies for all three tenets of publishing information in the public's interest, and is a world leader, meaning that Twitter has repeatedly considered it in the public and global interest to keep Trump's tweets up, even if flagged.
Once Trump is out of office, his account will certainly not be protected by Twitter's world leader criteria, and will likely no longer be protected by the public interest criteria, should he continue to break the platform's rules.