Trump vs. Twitter’s terms of service: Loss avoidance is the final word

The media loves nothing more than talking about how unconventional Trump is in public. I admit, I find his rhetoric astounding and quite problematic for a leader, particularly a leader of the world’s most powerful nation.

However, it has been noted that Twitter, Trump’s favourite media platform, and one which has frustrated users for banning them in the past, has not banned Trump.

It has come up that Trump’s tweets, particularly his recent tweets at North Korea, constitute threats of violence, which are in direct violation of Twitter’s policy (see below).

Now, I imagine that Trump would like nothing more than Twitter to ban him. After all, nothing would create a greater media firestorm and allow him to put twitter in the same class as CNN. The spotlight on Trump would be the brightest.

In any case, the Daily Dot has put it pretty clearly:

“Of course, Twitter has a long, toxic history with harassment, and while it’s made some notable strides in recent months, the company has largely failed to curb hate speech and threats on the platform. It’s unlikely that Twitter would consider banning Trump, considering he’s the president of the United States and doing so would almost certainly result in disaster for the company. But it’s enough to make one question the value of the service.”

In many ways, this shows where Twitter’s values are as a company. However, given that it is also unlikely that the millions of users that would agree with a Trump-Ban will leave the site for Twitter not enforcing its own rules, it seems that the ball is in Twitter’s court, and they’ll not take the shot.

This might, however, work in Twitter’s favour. Most of their users don’t like the president-and his approval rating is really low, Twitter already has a bad reputation for censorship by those who hate censorship, they have a reputation for facilitating bullying for those who hate bullying, and the media coverage of banning the president — even temporarily — would likely increase their user base and give them a bit of a bump (which they could use).

Twitter needs to ask itself right now what it has to lose. The answer is probably very little, banning — even temporarily — would allow them to have their cake and eat it too. They can enforce their “values” and get a bump (possibly even reflected in stock price). So why wouldn’t they do it? I’m afraid that’s an open question that we’ll not get an answer to as Twitter, like all companies, is generally risk averse and there is frankly too much risk involved in the move. It could be brilliant, and it might be most likely that it is brilliant, but there is a reasonable risk that it will be catastrophic, and psychologists and behavioral economists like Kahneman and Tversky have demonstrated that in such situations, we’re not likely to see the risky option.