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Donald Trump is a menace to social media.
Please sign the petition below (or here) and tell Twitter
to permanently ban Donald Trump from its service.
Trump puts the “bully” in bully pulpit. Trump regularly uses his nearly 17 million Twitter followers to attack and insult people, places and things (289 by the New York Times’ count, and that’s only since Trump declared his candidacy in mid-2015).
What’s worse, Trump has a tendency to “punch down”: Trump likes to attack a little guy, knowing full well the little guy will quickly get overwhelmed by the imminent onslaught of Trumps millions of minions.
United Steelworkers 1999 president Chuck Jones learned the hard about Trump’s cyberbullying yesterday when he criticized Trump’s Carrier deal on CNN.
Within 20 minutes, Trump was on Twitter attacking Jones.
Half an hour later, the phone calls started rolling in. “You better keep your eye on your kids,” they warned Jones. And “we know what car you drive.”
This is hardly the Trump campaign’s first run-in with Tweeting gone bad. Trump’s pick for National Security Advisers, Michael Flynn, and his eponymous son, recently tweeted fake conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, involving child sex slaves. Just such a theory sent an armed North Carolina man into a pizza parlor in Washington, DC this week.
Trump’s latest Twitter bullying led Robert Reich told CNN: “Let me just say with all due respect, Mr. Trump, you are president-elect of the United States, you are looking and acting as if you are mean and petty, thin-skinned and vindictive. Stop this.”
But Trump won’t stop this. He’s given no indication of any self-control. And in fact, he seems to relish in his Twitter tirades.
The only thing that can stop Donald Trump is Twitter itself.
While the notion of banning Trump from Twitter may at first sound extreme, Twitter’s own rules put Trump on thin ice:
Any accounts and related accounts engaging in the activities specified below may be temporarily locked and/or subject to permanent suspension.
Violent threats (direct or indirect): You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism.
Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include:
– if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others;
– if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats;
– if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and
if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.
Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.
Let’s walk through Twitter’s rules and Trump’s actions:
1. Violent threats and harassment.
And while Trump himself has not directly threatened violence on Twitter, he has threatened it offline at his rallies. So his followers know what Trump lies. And, I’d argue that Trump knows, or should know, the possible consequences of tweeting attacks on private citizens — especially after what happened with the Comet pizza parlor fiasco, where there could have been a bloodbath. Trump’s behavior is at the very least reckless.
2. Hateful conduct.
Attacking women:
Racism:
Promoting fake news:
Trump is also prolific at creating and sharing “fake news.” As you know, fake-news has become a huge problem this year. So much so, the Pope this week called fake news a sin. From the fake news that led to a near mass murder at the Comet restaurant, to the fake news created and shared by the Russian government to help get Trump elected, fake news is a real problem that social media must address.
Donald Trump is one of the world’s biggest purveyors of fake news. In addition to Trump’s racist fake news tweets above about Muslims on 9/11 and President Obama’s birth certificate, there are also tweets spreading fake news about autism and global warming and the election itself:
By banning Donald Trump, Twitter can strike a major blow against fake news and bullying.
It’s time to put a stop to Donald Trump’s cyber-bully pulpit. Tell Twitter to ban Trump, and make Twitter great again.
Sign the petition below:
To: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
From: [Your Name]
Donald Trump is a menace to social media. It’s time for Twitter to permanently ban Trump from the service.
Donald Trump has repeatedly violated Twitter’s own rules prohibiting harassment and hateful conduct. By banning Donald Trump, Twitter can not only strike a major blow against bullying, but also against the increasing threat posed by “fake news,” of which Trump is a huge purveyor.
Please put an end to Donald Trump’s cyber-bully pulpit. Ban Donald Trump, and make Twitter great again.
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