Trump Twitter Deleted: Twitter Didn’t Silence The President-Elect Over Inflammatory Tweets [Debunked]
Has Donald Trump’s Twitter account been deleted? That’s the question a lot of internet users are asking after a rumor started gaining traction, alleging that the social media giant silenced the president-elect for racist and other inflammatory posts.
And the answer is no, Donald Trump’s Twitter account has not been deleted, as you can tell by the fact that Trump is still tweeting away. The tweet embedded below is time-stamped 9 a.m. Eastern time, a mere two hours before this writer began work on the article.
.@CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS because their ratings are tanking since election and their credibility will soon be gone!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017
In fact, it’s rather apt that Trump would mention “fake news” in the tweet used as an example, as the notion that his Twitter account was deleted was a result of “fake news.”
As Snopes reports, the notion that Trump’s Twitter account was deleted gained traction thanks to an “official-looking” news report that purported to be from Twitter’s management.
“Twitter will not tolerate active users, whose only message is one of hate, racism and intolerance. Donald Trump may have been elected to the White House, but at least someone can stand up to him, for the American people and say, ‘No Mr. Trump, we are not with you.'”
The source for this fake news report, according to Lead Stories, is a website designed to spoof CNN. Using graphics that appear to have been illegally lifted from the real CNN, as well as using a similar font and page layout, cnn.com.de got the ball rolling on the fake story (you can read the entire fake story here). The -.de domain name at the end of the fake CNN domain name should be a giveaway: the.de domain name is for websites from Germany. The real CNN is based in Atlanta.
In fact, lifting imagery and mimicking fonts and page layouts from legitimate websites, as well as using domain names that look close enough like a real source’s real domain name to be convincing, are two of the tricks of the trade used by fake news purveyors.
In fact, according to How Stuff Works, fake news can be tricky to spot. However, there are some steps you can take to spot a fake news story. For example, stories that are only covered by one source (in the case of Trump’s Twitter account being deleted, the spoof CNN) are likely to be fake news. In other cases, some sites (like the Onion) freely admit that they’re satire, while other sites that publish hoaxes and/or satire sites (like NewsBuzzDaily) bury the fact that they’re satire in disclaimers hidden on the page. Another giveaway, of course, is the presence of foreign domains (like .de or .il) in the URL of a news organization not based in the country the domain name comes from.
As for Twitter, the social media giant can and will suspend your account (you can appeal or be reinstated), and even delete it, for violating certain rules, according to the Terms of Service. One thing that will get you deleted from Twitter is “abusive behavior,” which is defined here and includes such things as threats, harassment, and hateful conduct.
Whether Donald Trump’s Twitter account does any of those things is left up to the reader, but one thing is for certain: As of this writing, Donald Trump’s Twitter account has most certainly not been deleted.
[Featured Image by Tom Pennington/Getty Images]
