Twitter to start publicly flagging politicians’ abusive tweets

Even Twitter, it seems, is sick of Twitter. 

On Thursday, the San Francisco-based tech giant announced a new plan intended to blunt the impact of tweets from politicians and government officials that violate its policies while still leaving the problematic content on the platform. It’s a difficult needle to thread, but Twitter clearly believes it’s found a solution that serves the public interest. 

Here’s how it will work: When a politician tweets something that would normally get pulled for violating Twitter’s rules, the company will now mark the tweet with a label explaining why it deems the content problematic. Twitter will also, among other steps, keep the tweet in question out of its algorithmically controlled Top Tweets timeline in an effort to reduce its spread. 

Importantly, at least in this case, there’s no need to worry about the long arm of Jack Dorsey suddenly reaching out to censor your High Quality Content™. According to the announcement, this new process only applies to a unique subset of Twitter users. Specifically, that means accounts that are verified, have more than 100,000 followers, and belong to a government official, a person running for public office, or a person being considered for a government position. 

And yes, this definitely includes President Donald Trump. 

Now, you may be wondering, if a tweet violates the company’s policies, why leave it up at all? Well, Twitter has some thoughts on that. 

“[There] are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules,” reads the post. “On the rare occasions when this happens, we’ll place a notice — a screen you have to click or tap through before you see the Tweet — to provide additional context and clarity.” 

In other words, if a politician tweets some really bonkers shit, deleting that tweet may hinder an effort to hold that person to account. Which, actually, makes sense.

This new move goes into effect today. Whether it will have its intended effect is unclear. The first time Twitter slaps the above label on a tweet might well result in a Streisand-effect promotion of the content. 

But hey, knowing our government officials, we won’t have to wait long to find out.