Donald Trump to lose Twitter’s exemptions for public officials’ speech when he leaves office

Twitter’s crackdown on President Trump will not end when his presidency does, and could get tougher, The Washington Times has learned.

Mr. Trump will lose the protections from content moderation given by Twitter to public officials when he leaves office, meaning the company will treat him like any other private citizen subject to suspension from its site.

Twitter’s public-interest exceptions allow users to see tweets from public officials that would be removed by the company if a private user posted the same content.

When asked if such exceptions would apply to Mr. Trump when he leaves office, Twitter responded in a statement indicating that they would not.

“Twitter’s approach to world leaders, candidates and public officials is based on the principle that people should be able to choose to see what their leaders are saying with clear context. This means that we may apply warnings and labels, and limit engagement to certain tweets,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Washington Times. “This policy framework applies to current world leaders and candidates for office, and not private citizens when they no longer hold these positions.”

Since Saturday, Twitter has tagged or labeled 15 of Mr. Trump’s tweets and limited the visibility of several of them. Instead of such tags and labels, Mr. Trump in the future could face suspension from the platform if he violates the company’s rules as a private individual.

Other large social media platforms have taken similar actions, including Facebook, which removed the group “Stop the Steal” that was organized by the pro-Trump nonprofit Women for America First.

The group picked up 350,000 followers in less than 24 hours, according to its creator, Women for America First co-founder Amy Kremer, before Facebook took action and said it saw “worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”

In response to the Big Tech crackdown and projections that Joseph R. Biden won the presidential election, conservatives looking for refuge from established social media platforms have flocked to the burgeoning social media platform Parler, which surged to the top of Apple and Google’s app stores’ charts.

Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store both displayed Parler as the top free app available in their stores on Monday afternoon, trending ahead of such apps as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and many others.

Following election projections on Saturday, new downloads of Parler appeared to send the app soaring up the store charts. Dan Bongino, a conservative commentator and Parler investor, tweeted Sunday that Parler was “adding thousands of users per minute.”

“All, Can’t thank you enough for making Parler the # 1 app in the country. I’m asking for your patience while we deal with the exponential growth,” Mr. Bongino tweeted. “I personally assure you that we’re working around the clock to improve the experience & add features. My apologies for the glitches.”

As Mr. Trump’s supporters look for new media to organize and socialize online, Parler has emerged as an early front-runner for an alternative to established platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

In June, Parler CEO John Matze told The Washington Times that his platform had 1.5 million daily active users. Parler has not provided data on how its daily active users have grown amid its move atop the app store charts.

Facebook and Twitter are much larger than Parler. Facebook said it had 196 million daily active users in the U.S. and Canada during 2020’s third quarter, in an announcement.

The number of daily Facebook users dropped 2 million from 2020’s second quarter but climbed nearly 9 million from the third quarter of 2019.

Twitter said it had 187 million daily active users globally, including 152 million in the United States, in a letter to shareholders on its third-quarter performance. The platform said its active users’ data showed it had grown by 1 million into 2020’s third quarter and was up 29% year-over-year.

Several prominent conservative users and groups are posting messages on platforms such as Twitter that direct their followers to join them on Parler this week.

“Parler is exploding. I went from 500,000 followers there a couple of weeks ago to 1.2 million currently,” tweeted Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator. “This is the hip new platform where the air is free and you can speak your mind. Follow me there!”