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Twitter's censorship of Donald Trump on Minneapolis protest is the boldest step in social media history

Protestors set a shop on fire during the third day of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis - Anadolu
Protestors set a shop on fire during the third day of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis - Anadolu

In its action against Donald Trump over a tweet warning Minneapolis protesters that 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts', Twitter has done the unthinkable.

Users now face an overlayed message stating that the US president's tweet 'glorifies violence', a so-called 'interstital' designed to reduce the content's circulation.

When the official White House account copied the Trump tweet, the same disclaimer was appended to it.

Make no mistake, this is perhaps the bravest and riskiest thing that any tech giant has ever done.

The intervention is being celebrated by a range of voices who have long called for Twitter to take more responsibility for how its platform is used.

It has also elicited a direct confrontation with the most powerful politician in the one jurisdiction that can do Twitter serious harm - something other social media giants have been desperate to avoid.

Just yesterday, Mr Trump used Twitter’s own platform to call out their head of integrity Yoel Roth, after the company added a fact-check to another tweet about mail-in ballots.

Mr Trump replied with an Executive Order trying to strip Twitter and the tech platforms of the protections they currently enjoy from the legal liabilities any publisher has, from defamation to breach of privacy.

There is only one person in Twitter who could have made this decision: its founder, Jack Dorsey, and it is an important one.  It seems a decision that is genuinely based on personal moral and cultural concern rather than financial or organisational self-interest.

He has long shown interest in questions of race and policing in the US, visiting #BlackLivesMatter protestors in 2014 for instance, a movement who owe their own origins in part to Dorsey’s platform.

Expect a theatrical, cataclysmic reaction from the Administration. Trump will see this as a useful opportunity to fire up his home base who have been feeling the squeeze from big tech for quite some time.

But part of Dorsey’s reckoning might also be that, months out from an election, Trump needs Twitter too much to seriously harm it. He’s the politician who has benefitted more from Twitter than any other.

Twitter cannot back down from its position now; it has to apply its policies to all of Trump’s tweets in the long months of campaigning ahead. Nor can Trump retreat; there’s too much to be gained in keeping this conflict going. More angry Tweets, and more interstitials, are yet to come.

Carl Miller is Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media  at Demos think tank