"I ran political advertising for Twitter. It's time for platforms to mute Trump."

[Ponietz]

[link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/19/twitter-mute-donald-trump/|

In just the past week, President Trump has retweeted a QAnon conspiracy theory alleging that Joe Biden and Barack Obama had SEAL Team 6 killed, called on supporters to form an army of poll watchers, asserted repeatedly that mailing in your ballot will result in a rigged election and tweeted four times in 11 minutes falsely tying unrest in Portland, Ore., to Biden.

Trump’s place as the first Twitter president is secure. He has used the platform to govern via tweeted policy announcements, to berate adversaries both domestic and abroad, to communicate with (and occasionally disparage) his own administration officials and to exhort his supporters to action. Trump has also effectively used Twitter to distract, deflect and drive the news narrative nearly every day since he descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to launch his campaign in 2015.
...
This is not unprecedented. Some nations impose a “silence period” before elections, during which campaigns pause all television and digital advertising (outside of get-out-the-vote activities). India, a nation with a sad history of violence between people and parties, uses this cooling-off period to allow voters to contemplate their decision without the cacophony of campaign communications.

In this case, however, the cooling-off period is necessary for the one candidate whose apparent sole motivation is to sow chaos and confusion around the ongoing election. Trump has already told his most dangerous supporters to “stand by.” Twitter and Facebook shouldn’t allow him to use their platforms to give violent actors the green light.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. They must stifle the obviously incorrect tidbits that rump and all of his thugs tweet and

report on, trying to distort the rule of law, trying to place people in harm's way by reporting the CV is not worse than the flu, and all such nonsense. These people are actually trying to harm and/or kill people.

[Ponietz]

2. They must be held liable, in $ DOLLARS.

Tidbits isn’t quite the right word when this messaging is their core platform.