It’s time to think about whether Twitter should continue to make exceptions for controversial posts by world leaders. This was announced by Katie Minshall, Head of Twitter Policy in the UK, addressing the House of Lords Communications and Digital Technology Committee, AP reported.
Twitter is currently reviewing its policy towards politicians and government officials, allowing certain content that violates the rules to remain on the platform with cautionary notes.
The company claims that such an approach is in the public interest, allowing people to carefully study what world leaders say, but public consultations began in March to decide whether such exceptions should be made in the future.
The question arises as to why former US President Donald Trump was banned from entering the platform forever after the riots at the Capitol in January, and the accounts of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remained after numerous threats against Israel. In particular, in January last year, Khamenei wrote on Twitter: “The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and a scourge for this region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed. “
“We admit that sometimes a world leader can tweet something that breaks our rules, but there is a public interest in knowing that this world leader said just that.
In 2019, we announced that in these cases we would label such tweets.
As for Ayatollah Khamenei’s tweets, we have stated that when it comes to tweets that can be seen as a threat to weapons aimed at other governments that may focus on military or geopolitical issues, we have decided to retain those tweets. There are two reasons for this. First, given the public interest in what this leader said, and second, to enable people to hold this leader accountable for his words.
Two years have passed and now it is time to check whether this is the right approach. We are responsible for ensuring that Twitter does not set rules of conduct on such a fundamental issue, so we hold public consultations, invite government officials, human rights activists, and security experts from around the world to tell us how “In their opinion, how should we moderate the content of world leaders?”
