tech2 News StaffMar 29, 2019 14:25:56 IST
A random tweet by a user might seem ordinary but when a political figure puts content on the social platform it becomes a piece of public news even if its just a post about a food feast at the White House.
Image: AP
However, things might change on Twitter as the company is considering a new feature that will label tweets from politicians like Donald Trump when they violate the rules.
Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust and safety Vijaya Gadde in a Washington Post-sponsored event said that the company is considering labeling tweets that violate its rules. While Twitter is trying to ‘find a way’ to maintain its standard, Vijaya Gadde said that the company is exploring ways to annotate offensive tweets that violate its rules against offensive tweets, hate speech from public figures.
Although tweets from commoners that inject hate or defame one’s identity likely get removed for violating Twitter’s rules, the company grants an exemption for public figures and tweets it considers “newsworthy.”
Gadde however, says that doesn’t give them a complete dispensation and that it would draw a line on some content.
“There is absolutely a line of a type of content, an example being a direct, violent threat against an individual that we wouldn’t leave on the platform because of the danger it poses to that individual. But, there are other types of content that we believe is newsworthy or in the public interest that people may want to have a conversation around,” Gadde told The Washington Post.
President Trump has long been using Twitter as a tool to insult people and rebuke his foes on the social media platform. His offensive tweets of calling Harry Hurt a ‘dummy dope,’ a former staffer “a dog” was cited to be the actions of those akin to cyberbullying.
While politicians have been accused of misusing the platform with ‘inflammatory rhetoric,’ Gadde was asked if Trump’s getting total immunity with the company’s current approach. The executive in response said that the social media platform wants to find a way to keep tweets up for their worthiness.
“One of the things we’re working really closely on with our product and engineering folks is, ‘How can we label that? How can we put some context around it so people are aware that that content is actually a violation of our rules and it is serving a particular purpose in remaining on the platform?”, The Hill quoting Gadde said.
Twitter has come under fire from critics for Trump’s abusive posts and violation of the company rules. In 2017, Trump tweeted about North Korea that it “won’t be around much longer!” if it fails to change its relationship with the US. While the tweet sparked controversy, Twitter in defiance kept the tweets up by claiming it “newsworthiness”.
While Twitter earlier this year noted that a blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their tweets may hide ‘important information’ that people might see and debate, it remains to be how the company shall move forward with the labeling idea. Twitter hasn’t shared any detail regarding how and to whom the new ‘annotation standard’ would apply to.
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