Why Twitter won’t ban President Donald Trump

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Twitter has made it clear that it won’t ban Donald Trump from its service, whether or not the president follows its rules against harassment.

That’s no surprise: The president’s tweets draw attention to the struggling service, even if tweets mocking reporters and rivals undercut Twitter’s stated commitment to making the platform a welcoming place.

Calls to ban Trump from Twitter, largely by liberal activists, writers and Twitter users, sounded even before he became president. They were renewed recently when the president posted a mock video of him “body slamming” a man whose face was covered by CNN logo.

US President Donald Trump tweets a "knocking down CNN" video. /Twitter Screenshot

The company has been cracking down on accounts that violate its terms. But Trump’s critics said he has broken Twitter’s rules multiple times with no recourse.

Groups such as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press condemned the video as a threat against journalists (a White House aide said at the time that the tweet should not be seen as a threat).

The case for Trump

Twitter does ban harassment and hateful conduct, but there is a lot of wiggle room as to what constitutes such behavior. For instance, though it may be crude to tweet that a TV host was “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” they are at best in a gray area when it comes to violating Twitter terms.

When asked about Trump, Twitter said it doesn’t comment on individual accounts. But CEO Jack Dorsey told NBC in May that it’s “really important to hear directly from leadership” to hold people accountable and have conversations out in the open, not behind closed doors.

From the business perspective

CFP Photo

It also makes business sense: Trump’s tweets are constantly in headlines, calling attention to Twitter and, ideally, getting more users to sign up.

But for now, it doesn’t appear to be helping. On Thursday, Twitter said its monthly average user base in the April-June quarter grew 5 percent from the previous year to 328 million, but it was unchanged from the previous quarter. Twitter’s stock fell more than 9 percent to 17.75 US dollars in pre-market trading Thursday after the numbers came out.

Twitter has never turned a profit. The San Francisco-based company reported a second-quarter loss of 116 million US dollars, or 16 cents per share, compared with a loss of 107 million US dollars, or 15 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue declined five percent to 574 million US dollars from 602 million US dollars, inching past Wall Street's muted expectations.

Twitter is losing users in the US. /VCG Photo

Despite having one of the most influential people in the world as its loyal user, Twitter is losing users in the US. The company reported Thursday that its monthly user base in America declined to 68 million from 70 million in the most recent quarter. The platform has a 328-million global user base, unchanged from the prior quarter.

The lackluster user growth makes it hard to attract advertisers. In the most recent quarter, the company's revenue fell five percent from the same period in last year, CNN reported.

Important tweets

Free speech advocates agree it's better for Trump to stay.

Emma Llanso, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project, said Trump’s tweets are “very clearly politically relevant speech” and are even being cited in court cases challenging the president's policies. For example, a US appeals court used Trump's tweets in June to block his travel ban on people from six predominantly Muslim countries.

Llanso said it's understandable why there has been “so much pressure” on social media platforms to crack down on harassment. Long before Trump was elected, users and online safety advocates called on Twitter to do something about abuse on its service.

Free speech advocates agree it's better for Trump to stay. /VCG Photo

But when it comes to the president’s outsized presence on Twitter, she’d rather have a private company avoid deciding what should and shouldn’t be allowed. Rather, she said, “we should be looking to the instruments of our democracy as the appropriate place to hold the president accountable.”

Surviving the crackdown

Twitter appears to agree. Earlier this month, the company announced that it is now taking some action, including suspensions, on 10 times the number of abusive accounts than it did a year ago. Trump, of course, was not in trouble.

In June, the president defended his use of social media, tweeting that the mainstream media doesn't want him to get his “honest and unfiltered message out.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for an official comment.

(With input from AP)