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Twitter flags President Trump's Minneapolis protest tweet for 'glorifying violence'

The flag comes hours after POTUS signed an executive order to limit the legal protection currently afforded to social-media platforms

Published: May 29, 2020 7:23am

Updated: May 29, 2020 8:35am

Twitter early Friday tagged a warning to one of President Trump's tweets regarding the violent protests in Minneapolis over the George Floyd death – claiming that it violates the social media platform's rules about "glorifying violence."

Still, Twitter allowed the tweet to remain live, saying it "may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible."

The tweet address the continued and escalating violence in Minneapolis in the wake of Floyd's death. On Thursday night, protests escalated and became violent as looting continued and a police station was set on fire. 

Trump tweeted that "THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd" by wreaking havoc on Minneapolis. He said he is prepared to send in the National Guard if city and state leadership cannot get the situation under control and concluded with, "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!" It seems as though this last line is what violated Twitter's content standards.

It has been a tumultuous few days for the president's relationship with Twitter. Earlier in the week, the company began "fact-checking" Trump's tweets, which has drawn both praise and ire from politically active users of the social-posting platform. 

In an apparent response to the move, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday which seeks to limit the legal protection surrounding social-media platforms and make it easier for federal regulators to take action against companies that are unjustly preventing the use of their products by some users. It has long been a talking point that social platforms like Twitter and Facebook unfairly target the posts of politically Conservative users by blocking and deleting their posts and suspending their accounts without cause.

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