Twitter on Friday masked a message from Donald Trump on the Minneapolis clashes, leaving it nevertheless accessible, to signal an “apology for violence”, raising the controversy with the American president who seeks to limit the protection of the networks and their latitude to moderate the content.
“These VOYOUS dishonor the memory of George Floyd, and I will not let that happen. Just speak to Governor Tim Walz and tell him the army is by his side all along. At the slightest problem, when the looting begins, the shooting begins. Thank you! ”Donald Trump tweeted Thursday evening.
The president, followed by more than 80 million people on Twitter, published this message, which can be interpreted as an incitement to the police to use their weapons, after the fire at a police station in Minneapolis during ‘a third night of confrontation after the death of a black man, George Floyd, during a muscular arrest by white police.
A few hours later, the American social network masked this tweet with a warning message, simply leaving the possibility to retweet it with comments, but not to retweet it or to “like” it or respond to it. The tweet remains fully visible when the message is clicked.
“This tweet violates Twitter’s rules of violence. However, Twitter believes that it is in the public interest that this tweet remains accessible, “according to the social network.
On Thursday, Trump, outraged by Twitter’s attitude towards him who had first reported two of his tweets with the words “Check the facts”, signed a decree to limit the judicial protection of social networks in order to according to him “to defend freedom of expression in the face of one of the worst dangers there is”. The decree should be the starting point for a long legal battle.
The two messages reported on Tuesday claimed that the postal vote was necessarily “fraudulent” because subject to manipulation, an ultra-sensitive issue in the middle of the election year.
By signing the decree, Mr. Trump again denounced the “monopoly” of technology groups which he has long accused of having an ideological and political bias.
“They have the uncontrolled power to censor, edit, conceal or modify any form of communication between individuals and large public audiences,” he said.
Very active on Twitter, Mr. Trump decided to attack, in the name of freedom of expression – and in retaliation, according to his detractors – the famous Section 230 of the “Communications Decency Act”.
The cornerstone of the American internet, it offers Facebook, Twitter or YouTube (Google) immunity from any legal action related to content published by third parties and gives them the freedom to intervene on platforms as they wish.