"Twitter has shown a newfound willingness to enforce its policies," said Daniel Kreiss, a University of North Carolina professor specializing in politics and social media.
"If you're a private company you have a right to regulate content, and it behooves those companies to enforce these polices in a fair and transparent and publicly justifiable way. I think Twitter will do this in a consistent way."
While Twitter could have acted before on Trump's tweets, "I think there has been a gradual shift in thinking at Twitter inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its thinking about misinformation that is harmful," said Tiffany Li, a fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project who specializes in social media.
Twitter, which this week added fact-check labels to two Trump tweets and a violation notice on another, can go further under its enforcement guidelines. One option would be to "downrank" or limit the visibility of a tweet, or to remove it. But Twitter's policies also include a "public interest" exception which would require leaving a tweet online but with the possibility of blocking "engagements" such as retweets and likes.
Source - Read whole post at AFP here
