Just as I was finishing my article on the international efforts to curb COVID-19 related mis- and disinformation, the US Capitol was invaded by an angry mob egged on by a bitter departing President using social media to contest the election results and disrupt the transition of power.
As a consequence, Twitter and Facebook at first provided factual context and warnings on Trump’s messages, and then Twitter suspended him — at first temporarily and then permanently.
Trump is perhaps the most famous but far from the only leader using social media platforms to potentially explosive ends. So what is the current state of play regarding world leaders violating the rules of Facebook and Twitter?
Twitter announced principles and approach to handling world leaders’ accounts on the platform in October 2019. The platform identified balancing public interest and respect for its rules as key, explaining that it would keep Tweets that are in violation but place notice providing context alongside them. In some cases, such as promotion of terrorism, threats of violence or violating privacy, no exception would be made. It is precisely the risk of “further incitement to violence” that Twitter cited as grounds for the permanent suspension of @realdonaldtrump.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Twitter has carried out a number of suspensions linked to politics — in one of the biggest moves to date, it took down 193,750 Chinese, 7,430 Turkish and 1,152 Russian accounts in June 2020, in response to state-linked information operations. Some of the measures have hit at the inner circles of world leaders, as in July 2020, when Twitter, as well as Facebook, suspended the accounts of high-profile supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in compliance with an order by Brazil’s Supreme Court. Pro-government accounts in Venezuela and the Philippines have also been suspended. Similarly, Facebook has removed accounts linked to world leaders for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour but Trump became the first head of state facing an indefinite suspension.
The growing polarisation of global politics, with shock and sensationalism leaving little room for principled debate, has meant that world leaders and their associates are often testing the limits of social networks’ policies. But it took the storming of the US Capitol for Twitter to ban a head of state.
Most leaders’ use of Twitter and Facebook has been opportunistic — it is where their audiences are (Trump had 88 million followers and Erdogan has 17.3 million), and not just in the United States. If enforcement gets stricter — and it likely will, given that the horrifying scenes at the U.S. Capitol are, to many, a consequence of years of online incitement — leaders may opt for alternative channels. Indeed, in Tweets from the official @POTUS account that were later removed by the platform, Trump said:
“We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!”
Trump will soon be away from office but the last days of his Presidency will have an impact on how other world leaders — some of whom routinely express similarly divisive ideas — use the major social media networks. One thing is certain — no political figure will easily give up the power of instantly reaching millions, “my rocket ship” as Trump called it.
