Trump vs. Twitter: The president takes on social media moderation – The Verge

Trump’s January 6th Twitter lawsuit settled for ‘about $10 million’

2025-02-12T19:19:53-05:00

Elon Musk's X has agreed to pay President Donald Trump "about $10 million" to settle his lawsuit against Twitter, reports The Wall Street Journal. The settlement would come on top of an estimated $250 million that Musk, who now seemingly has broad authority over government agencies as the head of DOGE, put toward helping Trump get elected last year.

Trump sued Twitter, Facebook, and Google over his account suspensions following the January 6th, 2021, riot at the US Capitol, and a judge dismissed this lawsuit in 2022, rejecting arguments that the company was a state actor or that Section 230 is unconstitutional.

While Trump's case against …

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Elon Musk says he’s letting Donald Trump back on Twitter

2022-11-19T21:26:55-05:00

Donald Trump is allowed to rejoin Twitter, Elon Musk has announced. Musk justified that decision based on the results of his own personal Twitter poll. The @realDonaldTrump account and its tweets are fully visible again, just days after Trump confirmed he will run for president again in 2024.

Shortly after taking control of the social network, Musk said he wouldn't be reinstating any banned accounts until the company had set up and convened a content moderation council with "widely diverse viewpoints."

Instead, on Friday evening, as people drifted off for the pre-Thanksgiving weekend, he decided to poll his own followers on Twitter. "Reins …

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Twitter disables video in Trump retweet after Linkin Park files copyright complaint

2020-07-19T09:43:58-04:00

Twitter confirmed that it removed a campaign video President Trump had retweeted Saturday over a copyright complaint. The Linkin Park song "In the End" was featured in the background of the video, which included images of President Trump and excerpts from his inauguration speech.

"Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by copyright owner or their authorized representative," a Twitter spokesperson said in an email to The Verge on Sunday.

The band tweeted Saturday that it was pursuing a "cease and desist" and that it had not authorized use of its song in the video: "Linkin Park did not and does not endo …

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Twitter labels Trump video as ‘manipulated media’

2020-06-18T23:08:36-04:00

Twitter has labeled a video tweeted by President Trump as "manipulated media," as first reported by The Washington Post. The label is primarily cosmetic, but represents a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the president and his preferred social media platform.

"This tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context," Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough told the Post.

The clip edits footage of two children playing into a bizarre warning against race-baiting by the media, presented as a false CNN broadcast with the chyron "terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby." Since th …

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Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram removed a Trump campaign video over copyright complaint

2020-06-06T09:42:03-04:00

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have all removed a Trump campaign video from their platforms after receiving copyright complaints, Reuters reported. The nearly four-minute video featured images of the late George Floyd of Minneapolis, who died May 25th after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. A video of the incident has prompted nationwide protests of police violence.

Twitter disabled the video, while Facebook and Instagram removed posts containing the video. When President Trump objected to the removal in a tweet, calling it "illegal," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded: "Not true and not illegal. This was pu …

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Trump’s Twitter order violates the First Amendment, new lawsuit claims

2020-06-02T16:57:42-04:00

President Donald Trump's executive order targeting social media companies faced its first legal challenge Tuesday, claiming that Trump violated the companies' rights to free speech.

In its lawsuit, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) called Trump's order "retaliatory" because it specifically attacked Twitter for using its First Amendment right to comment and moderate the president's tweets. By attacking Twitter, the organization claimed that Trump's order could discourage other platforms from exercising their free speech rights to moderate the president's posts out of fear of retaliation from the federal government.

"The Executi …

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Facebook employees walk out in protest of Donald Trump’s posts

2020-06-01T13:34:58-04:00

Dozens of Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout on Monday in protest of the company's decision not to take action against incendiary posts by President Donald Trump last week, according to The New York Times.

The virtual walkout comes on the heels of a decision from Facebook not to take any action against a series of controversial posts from Trump last week, including one that seemed to threaten violence against protestors by saying, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Twitter determined that the same message violated its rules against the glorification of violence last week, limiting the ability to view, like, reply, and …

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Leaked posts show Facebook employees asking the company to remove Trump’s threat of violence

2020-05-29T16:54:12-04:00

Facebook's decision not to take action against recent posts about mail-in ballots and the Minnesota protests by President Trump is roiling employees, some of whom are calling on executives to reconsider their stance. In response to an internal post explaining the company's rationale, some employees criticized the company's neutral posture.

"I have to say I am finding the contortions we have to go through incredibly hard to stomach," one employee wrote in a comment about the shooting post. "All this points to a very high risk of a violent escalation and civil unrest in November and if we fail the test case here, history will not judge us kin …

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Twitter isn’t a government, but it’s the best one we’ve got

2020-05-29T14:23:10-04:00

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

This week, Twitter found the courage to finally deal with its most toxic user: the president of the United States. After giving one of Trump's untrustworthy tweets a modest reality check, the president exploded in a tantrum. He threatened to "shut down" social media companies, and then personally targeted a Twitter employee to intimidate and harass him. Then, Trump quickly threatened Twitter with revenge by signing a scorched-earth executive order that would blow up the entire internet. Trump's Republican lackeys, including Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Josh Hawley (R-MO), scurried to stroke the president's ego with deceitfu …

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Joe Biden doesn’t like Trump’s Twitter order, but still wants to revoke Section 230

2020-05-29T13:50:17-04:00

Former Vice President Joe Biden still wants to repeal the pivotal internet law that provides social media companies like Facebook and Twitter with broad legal immunity over content posted by their users, a campaign spokesperson told The Verge Friday. Still, the campaign emphasized key disagreements with the executive order signed by the president earlier this week.

Earlier this year, Biden told The New York Times that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be "revoked, immediately." In recent days, President Donald Trump has reinvigorated a controversial debate over amending the foundational internet law after Twitter fact-che …

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