WASHINGTON — President Trump’s provocative tweet aimed at North Korean leader Kim Jung Un triggered questions to the White House on Wednesday about his fitness for office. A group in San Francisco, however, is turning its attention not to Trump, but to Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey.
The group Resistance SF projected the message “Trump or @jack must go” on the side of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and staged a protest. It was one of several messages that have been projected at the locale in an effort to get the platform to curb the president’s social media posts.
“Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, has enabled @realDonaldTrump from his first dog whistles in the birther movement to his latest nuclear pissing contest,” the group said. “@Jack is #complicit. He endangers the world and allows Trump to break his company’s own terms of service to do it.”
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted, “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
In addition to stirring up a new round of criticism and consternation, the tweet also elicited complaints that it violated the company’s terms of service.
A company spokeswoman had no immediate comment, beyond emails that were sent to those who complained that Trump’s tweet violated terms of service in that it was a violent threat — this time of nuclear annihilation. Twitter responded that it did not. The company’s policy has an exemption for military or government entities, but Twitter also said that the Trump tweet did not constitute a “specific threat.”
The policy says, “You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people.”
“Due to the serious potential for offline harm, we have a zero tolerance policy towards violent threats. Accounts found to be posting violent threats will be permanently suspended.”
Dorsey and the company said that the company’s policy also takes into account newsworthiness and the public interest, a threshold that Trump obviously would meet as the commander in chief.
