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As Donald Trump feuds with Twitter, here's how the US President's relationship with the platform has evolved - ABC News

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As Donald Trump feuds with Twitter, here's how the US President's relationship with the platform has evolvedShareBetween #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, #CrookedHillary and #BuildTheWall, it's clear that Twitter is US President Donald Trump's most favoured method of communicating to the public. The independence Twitter allows has, until now, been consistent throughout his presidency, as he tweeted in late 2016: "If the press would cover me accurately &amp; honourably, I would have far less reason to 'Tweet'."But from Mr Trump's perspective, Twitter has just committed an act of betrayal, by tagging his tweets with warnings.Let's take a look at how the President's relationship with the social media giant has evolved.Donald Trump didn't always use Twitter to comment on politics. In 2009 when his account was new, it was used to promote his business ventures.By 2011, Mr Trump began to tweet political statements, criticising then-president Barack Obama over matters such as tensions with Iran, and later the Ebola outbreak.In 2015, He announced his intention to run for president, and his volume of tweets ramped up.Hashtags became campaign slogans as Mr Trump used the platform to communicate messages for his campaign and to discredit Democratic rivals.Once elected in 2016, Mr Trump made the unprecedented move of using his personal Twitter account (rather than the official POTUS account) to tweet in his official capacity as President.As he settled in to the White House, the influence his tweets carried intensified. One of his ambitious plans during his time in the White House was to negotiate peace between the US and North Korea, after North Korea's nuclear testing eroded international relations.But the lead-up to the historic 2018 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was fraught with threats and insults, often jabbed via Twitter.It was also when we saw Mr Trump nickname Mr Kim "Little Rocket Man".It was on Twitter that Mr Trump first announced the US military had assassinated Iran's arguably most important military leader.General Qassem Soleimani was seen as a war hero among many Iranians and his death sparked fury towards the US.In the aftermath, Iranian officials took to Mr Trump's preferred platform. Both sides exchanged taunting tweets, which ended with a final warning from an adviser to Iran's President: "Any adverse military action by the US will be met with an all-out war across the region."It sparked fears of a .In February this year, Mr Trump tweeted an edited video from the State of The Union that spliced together different moments of his address to make it seem like Nancy Pelosi had acted disrespectfully during key moments.The footage of Ms Pelosi infamously ripping Mr Trump's speech up after his address was edited to seem like it happened on several occasions, such as when a veteran was honoured, a military man was reunited with his family and when a young African-American girl was awarded a scholarship.Ms Pelosi's office appealed to Twitter and Facebook to remove the video from its platforms, but both refused.Twitter justified its decision by saying its new guidelines that may have led to the removal of the video weren't in place yet and therefore it could not retroactively review Mr Trump's content.Twitter has been subject to more recent appeals to remove the President's content after Mr Trump accused TV host Joe Scarborough of murdering his intern, Lori Klausutis, when he was a Republican congressman in 2001.Foul play was eliminated as a cause of Ms Klausutis's death. The medical examiner ruled she lost consciousness because of an abnormal heart rhythm and fell, hitting her head.In response to Mr Trump's conspiracy tweet, Ms Klausutis's widower penned a , asking for the President's tweets to be deleted. Again, Twitter refused to remove the content. Twitter has always operated under a "newsworthiness" policy that allows tweets by world leaders, which may violate community guidelines, to remain public. In March, the company revised its terms of service to say it would remove posts by anyone, even world leaders, if such posts went "against guidance from authoritative sources of global and public health information".This week, Mr Trump tweeted that mail-in or postal vote ballots were "fraudulent" and would result in a rigged election.Twitter tagged the tweets with a fact-check warning for people to "Get the facts about mail-in ballots".The company said it stepped in in this instance because the tweets .It was the first time the company had taken action on a US president's tweets, and wasn't the last.Twitter went so far as to hide a tweet from the President about the .In the tweet, Mr Trump borrowed a phrase once used by former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley in a 1967 speech outlining his department's efforts to "combat young hoodlums who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign".In the speech, Headley said his department had been successful "because I've let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts"."We don't mind being accused of police brutality," he said in the same speech.Twitter added a warning label to Mr Trump's tweet, preventing it from being shared or liked.The White House, trying to skirt the blockage, reposted the message on its own official Twitter account, but Twitter flagged that tweet too.The President lashed out at Twitter for applying fact checks to his postal ballot tweets, saying they were "editorial decisions" amounting to political activism.He then signed an executive order challenging the lawsuit protections that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech on the internet.The order directs executive branch agencies to ask independent rule-making agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, to study whether they can place new regulations on the companies — though experts express doubts much can be done without an act of Congress.After his tweets were slapped with a warning label and prevented from being shared, the President tweeted: "REVOKE 230!"Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, companies like Twitter and Facebook are granted liability protection because they are treated as "platforms," rather than "publishers" which can face lawsuits over content.A similar executive order was previously considered by the administration but it was shelved over concerns it couldn't pass legal muster and that it violated conservative principles on deregulation and free speech.ABC/wires30 May 202030 May 2020Sat 30 May 2020 at 3:46amMore on:

As Donald Trump feuds with Twitter, here's how the US President's relationship with the platform has evolvedShareBetween #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, #CrookedHillary and #BuildTheWall, it's clear that Twitter is US President Donald Trump's most favoured method of communicating to the public. The independence Twitter allows has, until now, been consistent throughout his presidency, as he tweeted in late 2016: "If the press would cover me accurately &amp; honourably, I would have far less reason to 'Tweet'."But from Mr Trump's perspective, Twitter has just committed an act of betrayal, by tagging...

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As Donald Trump feuds with Twitter, here's how the US President's relationship with the platform has evolved - ABC News

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