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Will Trump Be Banned On Twitter? Site Says It Will Ban Donald Trump, But Only If He Violates Site Rules

By David Cornell
Published on: 04:15 PST, Dec 1, 2016

A call for a “Trump ban” has hit Twitter as hate speech seems to have grown out of control due to the 2016 election. Such behavior is so common that the social media website mostly can’t even enforce their own rule against it.

Yes, hate speech is a violation of the Twitter terms of use, and the administrators are being forced to focus on the biggest offenders. If they banned everybody who used an offensive word, it’s likely that at least a quarter of the user base would vanish. It has become a popular place for people of all groups to voice their abridged opinions, many of which are laced with words not allowed in the workplace.

Donald Trump has yet to actually use any hate speech despite often using the social media platform to rant about different people. These people include Megyn Kelly, Rosie O’Donnell, several reporters from major news sources, and practically everybody who ran against him in the 2016 presidential elections.

Many people on social media are apparently tired of reading about his rants, especially after he defeated the popular vote and won the Electoral College.
The sentiment is so strong that a petition was raised to change the phrase “alt-right” to “white supremacist.” This may have been based mostly on the fact that Ku Klux Klan members supported Donald Trump, and he refused to condemn them.

Remember, Trump never said he supported white supremacist groups and has, in fact, disavowed them. They may have voted for him, but that is where the connection ends. The president-elect has stated his disapproval of immigrants of all kinds and even suggested at a rally that a member of Black Lives Matter should be “roughed up,” but he never used hate speech to say any of it.

This is the basis behind Twitter having not banned Trump from their website. A spokesperson told Slate that “Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies.”

This statement coincides with many high-profile Twitter accounts having been taken down for aligning themselves with “white supremacy.” What it means is that if Trump ever slips a derogatory word about anyone into his posts, his account will be banned like any other.

Of course, Twitter is having to focus on the accounts that are most followed. There are plenty of users who regularly drop the N-word and other no-nos, but allegedly they’re not famous enough to be worth banning.

Facebook isn’t taking the same stance, though. Mark Zuckerberg, while battling the recent emergence of fake news, has stated that even if Donald Trump does actually say anything directly racist, his account won’t be banned due to the newsworthiness of it.

Trump’s most recent controversial tweet was more about “illegal votes” than anything attacking people. It still stirred up trouble as fact-checkers on both sides of the political spectrum pointed out how wrong he was, according to Quartz. He’d said he’d won by a “landslide” had it not been for the nearly 2.5 million votes Clinton had over him.

It is difficult to tell where the facts are in the whole mess we called the 2016 presidential election, but we now know where Twitter and Facebook stand on Trump’s controversial statements.

Many Republicans are hoping that Trump will stop and think before saying or posting anything once he delivers his inaugural address. He might just get banned for using the wrong words on Twitter.

[Featured Image by a katz/Shutterstock.com]

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