This test proves Jack ain’t lying—Twitter treats Trump differently [UPDATED]

Update: the person behind the @SuspendThePres account contacted us to clarify that it's not a bot and all the account's tweets are done manually. The original story is below. Original story: In the past, Twitter has said that incitements to violence from world leaders like President Donald Trump should be treated differently from those made by the rest of us. This week, that policy was shown to clear effect when the social media network banned the @SuspendThePres account and ordered it to delete a tweet. Its crime? Tweeting the exact same words used by Trump a day earlier. The experiment began on May 29 when a Twitter account was repurposed as a bot with a single mission: to copy Trump's tweets verbatim and see how long it would take to get banned.

This account will tweet what the President tweets. Let’s see if it gets suspended for violating twitters TOS. Follow along with this social experiment. Report any tweets that violate the rules. Thank you. — Will they suspend me? (@SuspendThePres) May 30, 2020

The next thing the account tweeted was a copy of Trump's infamous "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" missive. When the president issued that tweet, it was, in fact, sufficient for Twitter's moderation to kick in. Trump's tweet is still viewable behind a "click to view" barrier. But three days after repeating that same call to shoot at protestors, @SuspendThePres got a Twitter timeout, along with an order to take down the offending message:

Experiment Update - Well it finally happened. Took longer than expected. 12 hour suspension and had to delete the offending tweet. Here’s the screenshots @suspendthepres. Will post to the account when suspension is lifted. pic.twitter.com/wvKV9HDKBn — Bizarre Lazar (@BizarreLazar) June 1, 2020

As even the bot's creator acknowledges, the problem of how to apply community-decency standards on indecent behavior from world figures with the stature of a US president is a complicated one. Glorifications of violence become newsworthy when they're issued by a sitting president in a way that isn't true for most of us. At the same time, it's precisely the fact those words are coming from someone with so much reach and responsibility that makes such statements that much more problematic compared to when they're made by anyone else. However, other social media platforms are taking a more proactive approach: on Wednesday Snapchat said it was removing Trump from its Discover tab as a result of his incitements to violence on Twitter. For their part, the bot's operator told Mashable that they plan to continue repeating Trump's words from the account, as well as those of future presidents, if possible.