Twitter applied a warning label early Friday on Donald Trump’s latest tweet about the death of George Floyd, which it said violated its rules against glorifying violence.
Trump had called people protesting the death of Floyd, who died in Minneapolis on Monday after a police officer knelt on his neck, “THUGS” and threatened violence in response. “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” tweeted the president.
Protests have erupted nationwide over Floyd’s death with demonstrators in Minneapolis setting buildings on fire and warring with police.
Twitter’s label, below, said the platform had “determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
Users are still able to click through to see Trump’s post:
Trump is yet to respond to the label.
But the move is sure to escalate tensions between Trump and Twitter, which on Tuesday put fact-check warnings on two of the president’s tweets in which he baselessly claimed that mail-in voting was “substantially fraudulent.”
Trump hit back and accused the platform of “stifling free speech.”
Then, on Thursday, he signed an executive order in a bid to weaken legal protections for social media companies by pushing the liability for what gets posted onto them.
Twitter has, however, this week refused to delete Trump’s spreading of baseless conspiracy theories about MSNBC’s host Joe Scarborough.
Twitter confirmed Friday that it had “placed a public interest notice” on Trump’s post:
It followed a growing backlash from other prominent users of the platform, including comedian Patton Oswalt, a fierce critic of the president:
