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Twitter tries to explain why Trump's posts aren't like others

If it's 'newsworthy' then the tweet stays up, even if it's a threat.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

So if Twitter's rules ban "violent threats," then surely a tweet indicating that a country "won't be around much longer" from a user with the ability to make that happen would be deletion-worthy, right? As the company was forced to explain today, not quite. Donald Trump's tweet about North Korea may have riled that nation's representatives, but according to a thread from its global public policy team, "newsworthiness" and whether a Tweet is of public interest" comes into play. It says it will update its public-facing rules to make that clear, but clearly it has no interest in trying to place a muzzle on the accounts of any particular political leader -- no matter what he tweets next.

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Any accounts and related accounts engaging in the activities specified below may be temporarily locked and/or subject to permanent suspension.