Twitter has confirmed that President Donald Trump will no longer receive “special protections” beginning on January 20th at 12:01 p.m. if he does not win the election.
The platform has already been censoring the president and his supporters for years, but is now promising even more censorship if he does not fall in line.
Twitter claims to have a policy in which they allow tweets from world leaders that would otherwise be censored from normal civilians. On Thursday, they confirmed to Bloomberg News that former leaders do not have the same protections.
“But former world leaders aren’t protected under that policy. High-profile politicians no longer in office — like former U.S. President Barack Obama — are treated like regular users if they violate Twitter’s rules, which prohibit messages that include hate speech or posts that glorify violence or contain certain types of false information, like dangerous health-related misinformation,” Bloomberg reports.
The report added, “Trump will fall into the ‘former’ group if he leaves office in January, Twitter confirmed. If that happens, breaking one of Twitter’s rules means his tweets may be removed entirely instead of labeled. He could also rack up ‘strikes’ for multiple violations, which would increase the severity of punishment issued from the company, and could lead to temporary account freezes, suspensions or even a permanent ban.”
Since the polls closed on election night, Twitter has censored eight tweets from the president for “violating the company’s rules.”
