Tweets by Trump to stay on microblogging platform because of their newsworthiness: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone

As twitteratis wondered why the microblogging platform did not remove US President Donald Trump’s latest controversial tweet on North Korea that clearly violated its guidelines, Twitter has given a confusing reply. Trump tweeted last weekend: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!” People wondered why Twitter did not remove the tweet that violated the company’s rules.

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017

Reacting to this, Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter, posted on Monday night: “Some of you have been asking why we haven’t taken down the Tweet mentioned here. [caption id=“attachment_4082771” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image: Reuters[/caption] We hold all accounts to the same Rules, and consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our Rules. Among the considerations is its ’newsworthiness’ and whether a Tweet is of public interest. This has long been internal policy and we’ll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it. We need to do better on this, and will,” Stone said in the Medium post. Later, a company spokesperson told Recode that Twitter’s post was not confirming that Trump’s tweet violated its rules. “Just that ’newsworthiness’ is one factor that is used internally to determine whether or not to take something down,” the report said quoting the spokesperson. Twitter has never acknowledged publicly that Trump has violated any of its guidelines. CEO Jack Dorsey has also defended Trump’s tweets. “I believe it’s really important to have these conversations out in the open, rather than have them behind closed doors,” Dorsey had said in May.