As
protests erupted throughout the US,
Donald Trump posted incendiary comments to social media. While
Twitter hid the president’s post,
Facebook took no action. The Guardian’s Alex Hern looks at what happened next
The killing of George Floyd at the hands of a US
police department outraged the country and prompted protest movements across the US and then the world. As Donald Trump witnessed scenes of disorder, he did what he often does: fired off some comments on Twitter, which were cross-posted to Facebook. After condemning
protesters he signed off with an ominous threat “when the looting starts, the
shooting starts”.
It left the two
Social Media companies with a dilemma: how to handle such provocative words from the US president. Twitter hid the tweet behind a message outlining an infringement of its guidelines. Facebook, on the other hand, did nothing.