In a stunning statement to Politico on Tuesday, the legal and policy chief for social media behemoth Twitter told reporters that President Donald Trump is not immune from being banned from the platform for violation of the Twitter terms of service, despite numerous attempts by users in the past to have his account silenced for blatant violations.
In a joint interview with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Vijaya Gadde said that although the rules against abusive, hateful, or vitriolic tweets do have some room for exceptions for Trump and other world leaders whose accounts are considered more “newsworthy” than average users who might be subjected to bans for less, that this:
…is not a blanket exception for the president or anyone else.”
Dorsey, who frequently comes under fire on his own site over the platform’s seeming inability to rid itself of rampant abuse by sexists, homophobes, and outright Nazis, was more measured in his response to the hypothetical banning of Donald Trump:
We have to balance it with the context that it’s in. So my role is to ask questions and make sure we’re being impartial, and we’re upholding consistently our terms of service, including public interest.”
It’s hard to imagine how Twitter would carry out such a ban at this point, now that prominent conservatives including some members of Congress are convinced that there is a concerted effort on social media to silence conservative voices.
Nonetheless, seeing that Twitter is willing to at least look at the possibility of quieting an account that has very nearly sparked global thermonuclear war is definitely a positive mark toward their management.
Featured image via screen capture
