How Donald Trump’s social media redux is shaping political discourse ahead of the U.S. Presidential Election 2024
The Hindu
We’ll look at how some social media platforms are adapting to Trump 2.0.
Since the January 6, 2021 U.S. riots that saw over 1,000 intruders forcing their way into the Capitol building in Washington D.C. to destroy property and attack people, a lot has changed in the world of social media. Twitter (now the Elon Musk-owned X), Meta, and Google-owned YouTube have reversed their ban on former U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
Now that Trump is once again in the presidential race, social media platforms are caught in a dilemma: they are legally bound to ensure a safe experience for all their users, but are also expected to give the former president a platform that is not overly-regulated or restricted when compared to his political opponents.
With this principle in mind, tech companies have been priming their networks and updating their policies for some months now. We’ll look at how several social media platforms are adapting to Trump 2.0.
Trump was a heavy Twitter user when he was the U.S. president. On the platform, he ranted about American politics, urged people to vote for his allies, claimed voter fraud, and aired his views on a number of trending topics in strong, sweeping terms—many times without any evidence.
Twitter took issue with two tweets by Trump from January 8, 2021: in one, Trump referenced his voters and called them “American Patriots,” promising they would be heard long into the future. In another tweet, Trump said he would not be attending the inauguration on January 20, 2021.
“We assessed the two tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” said Twitter as it announced a permanent suspension of his account.
While Trump first said he would not be re-joining X, he changed his position after Musk formally endorsed him as the presidential candidate and pledged his support.
