Twitter temporarily prevents users from interacting with Trump’s tweets

Annaliese Levy |

Dec 14, 2020

President Trump’s battle with censorship continued this weekend as Twitter briefly prevented its users from interacting with his tweets early Saturday morning.

Twitter users were unable to like or reply to a series of tweets made by Trump concerning election fraud and the recent US Supreme Court decision on the Texas lawsuit.

“Justices Alito and Thomas say they would have allowed Texas to proceed with its election lawsuit.” @seanhannity This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice. The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced. Never even given our day in Court!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

When users attempted to interact with the tweets, they received an alert explaining why Twitter had disabled the features.

“We try to prevent a Tweet like this that otherwise breaks the Twitter Rules from reaching more people, so we have disabled most of the ways to engage with it,” stated Twitter.

never seen Twitter do this before. Much stricter engagement with 3 Trump tweets this morning pic.twitter.com/TddOPuk3um
— David Mack (@davidmackau) December 12, 2020

A few hours later the features had been reinstated on the tweets, while still bearing a warning label stating that the contents of the post were disputed.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill on Saturday that the actions on the tweets had been reversed.

“We inadvertently took action to limit engagements on the labeled Tweet,” the spokesperson said. “You can now engage with the Tweet, but in line with our Civic Integrity Policy it will continue to be labeled in order to give more context for anyone who might see the Tweet.”

“Throughout the year, we made product changes and policy updates to encourage more thoughtful consideration and reduce the potential for misleading information to spread on Twitter,” the spokesperson added.

Twitter began fact-checking Trump’s tweets earlier this year and has consistently added warning labels to his tweets claiming the information is “misleading.”

Trump’s battle with censorship has been ongoing and has escalated in recent months with Trump calling for an end of Section 230.

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