Twitter’s Trump Ban Explanation Letter Needs to Be Removed for Safety Reasons

An open letter to Twitter

Dear Twitter,

I have long been a fan of you and am a long-time user of Twitter.

I really appreciate your decision to remove Trump from Twitter, and all your efforts surrounding this situation. From my station here up in Canada, it really looks like the US is on the brink of or is already in civil war.

There’s no way to know how things will go, but I wanted to offer some perspective on the contents of the explanation page you provided in case helpful (I will not include the link here as I do not wish to be involved in disseminating it further)

I believe that the contents of this page should be dulled down or removed entirely, immediately. No reference to reasons, dates, or potential plans should be given or further disseminated to the general public (though they should certainly be disseminated to the authorities). I don’t think you need to give extensive reasoning to the public for your decision. The reasoning you’ve outlined on this page may enlighten supporters to covert words/plans that they may not otherwise hear/know about.

The words you have put on this page paint a clear picture of potential plans to come on certain dates, which may inform and incite other terrorists (as that’s what they are) to rally and join in — and without this page (which is currently being widely shared across the Twitter platform), it might be harder for them to discover the potential plans and organize. Why not try to erase him and his tweets entirely like FB did — I wonder if that might be better.

The policy you had previously was to hide Trump’s tweets from the public, to repost them to another page. Why now, at potentially the most dangerous moment of all, are you reposting them to another page and adding further information about dates and plans? That is perpetuation of violence in itself, and in my opinion, a violation of your own policies (e.g. policies about not disseminating information that could incite violence). I have just sent in a Twitter Safety report, reporting you to…well, you. I hope you will get to this and remove it ASAP.

Here is an example tweet which I think elaborates on what I am saying (e.g. that people may not have such an extensive understanding of potential plans without accessing this page).

I think without the detailed explanation on the page, there may be less general understanding of potential plans — which could perhaps be good as less Trump supporters might engage in terrorism plans

I appreciate that this is a difficult time and it’s hard to know what to do (how on earth did we get to a place where tech companies end up needing to govern the actions of presidents?) — and who knows if what I’m proposing is a good course of action — but I thought I’d pass it along for consideration in case helpful. Anyway obviously you are way more in touch with the platform and what’s worked and hasn’t in the past, but just wanted to share in case helpful

P.S. once you dull down the contents of your page, I will remove this post to avoid any reference to the former page (which would also be a reference that could incite violence).

Thanks,

Jenn