Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris doubled down on calls for Twitter to nix President Donald Trump’s account ahead of the election after the Silicon Valley company explained why such a move is not in the public’s interest.
Harris is trying to make nixing Trump’s account a cause celebre in the Democratic presidential race. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for one, dismissed the idea during Tuesday night’s democratic debate, saying “I don’t want to push Trump just off Twitter. I want to push him out of the White House.”
“Twitter is not holding Donald Trump accountable for abusing their platform to threaten people and incite and inspire violent behavior,” the California senator told CNN on Wednesday night after Twitter noted in a letter that the president has not yet violated the platform’s policies.
Trump uses his account to “target, harass, and attempt to out the whistleblower,” Harris told Twitter in an Oct. 2 letter. She was referring to the president’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president, which ultimately prompted Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry.
Twitter has a different perspective on Trump’s tweets. (RELATED: Donald Trump Jr. Gets The Last Laugh In Twitter War With Kamala Harris)
US President Donald Trump and Italian President Sergio Mattarella (not pictured) hold a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, DC, on October 16, 2019. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
“We understand the desire for our decisions to be ‘yes/no’ binaries, but it is not that simple,” Vijaya Gadde, who heads Twitter’s trust and safety teams, said to Harris in the letter obtained by CNN. “We reviewed the Tweets you cite in your letter, and they do not violate our policies against abusive behavior, targeted harassment, or violence on the service.”
Twitter’s letter to Harris comes months after the company announced a decision to begin down ranking politicians’ most vitriolic tweets. The down-rankings come with a label that applies to all verified political candidates and officials with more than 100,000 followers.
Users who want to view flagged content must click on a screen that says Twitter’s rules against abusive behavior apply to the tweet. Such de-rankings would result in fewer people seeing content with the label.
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