Twitter identified a Donald Trump Jr. Tweet as harmful COVID-19-related misinformation and, as a result, has also temporarily limited the account’s functionality. The President’s son shared a video from an organization known as “America’s Frontline Doctors” that promoted Hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for coronavirus. Beyond merely censoring the post, the social media platform issued additional sanctions that involved temporarily limiting Trump Jr.’s access to the service. Twitter’s process for determining content that must be removed was recently updated to provide clarity, as well as to mention the potential for sanctions.
The sanctions permitted Trump Jr. to access the content of others as well as to send direct messages. To be clear, it is not a complete suspension. An actual suspension would involve locking the account owner out of the service entirely and, potentially, removing all of the prior content, such as promotion for his new book, until further notice. Trump Jr. was, however, inhibited from publicly tweeting for a period of twelve hours, which is set to endure into the evening of July 28.
Vice reported the temporary sanctions while the BBC has provided more extensive investigation into the wider spread of the viral misinformation and the nature of the AFD organization that made the initial video. Republican Strategist Andrew Surabian shared a screen shot of the notice that Donald Trump Jr. received from Twitter, while erroneously referring to the penalty as a suspension, indicating his shared belief that this latest censoring of the Hydroxychloroquine claim constitutes free speech suppression. The events of the day are one of multiple recent attacks against major social media networks as political agents.
How The Sanction Against Donald Jr. Was Decided
The sanction is somewhat novel, as prior updates mentioned that account removals would occur in the case of repeat offenders. However, the unique considerations in this instance are likely behind the early application of lesser sanctions. It is, after all, merely a tiny slap on the beak relative to the sanctions that could be applied. In other less potentially harmful situations, as well as in situations of first offense, such as the recent copyright battle against an A.I. musician, the content is merely removed without sanction. Meanwhile, in the case of those whose Tweets have the most potential to spread misinformation, an intermediate punishment makes absolute sense.
An aggressive strategy of removing the beaks of those who share false claims could lead to a bleak beak-less future for those who wish to share misinformation. While some might favor releasing all COVID-19-related misinformational claims into the world as a deluge, the pollution of the mind that would result could have devastating consequences on a global level. It is not equivalent to permitting non-censorship of hate speech or racist content within media, at least not at this moment in time, in which society is in the midst of a global crisis. Twitter made the right move to remove the content and to provide an intermediate sanction in order to provide demonstration effects to others about thinking carefully before posting misinformation.
