[imagesource: Lazaro Gamio/Axios]

Since Donald Trump took over the presidency in the US back in early 2017, the world has watched on in a combination of fascination and horror as he tweets lies, conspiracy theories, and whatever he has fixated on in the news (or has seen on Fox News).

The most recent example of this, of course, was the now infamous “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet, an incitement to violence against #BlackLivesMatter protesters.

Having watched social media platforms lose their minds over odd things like the mere hint of a nipple in pictures of women (#FreeTheNipple), it became evident that Twitter and others seem to hold world leaders to a different standard than the rest of us.

To test this theory, Twitter user @BizarreLazar decided to create an account, @SuspendThePres, that tweets Trump’s rants verbatim to see how long he could last before he was shut down.

Over to VICE:

The account was suspended within three days after it posted the now-infamous Trump tweet warning that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

While Trump got a slap on the wrist from Twitter, and his tweet was hidden behind a warning message, @SuspendThePres had their account temporarily locked until they deleted the tweet.

Here’s the update that @BizarreLazar posted on his own account, including the response from Twitter:

Of course, when Trump was admonished by Twitter he lost his mind, promptly issuing an executive order governing how websites can moderate content.

The person behind the social media experiment, who would not reveal any information about themselves but who also tweets as @BizarreLazar, told VICE News it was Trump’s own effort to target companies like Twitter that inspired the idea.

“I decided to run this experiment right after the President issued his executive order against social media,” SuspendThePres said in a direct message to VICE News. “I wanted to see for myself if he was indeed violating the Terms of Service. Figured what better way to test out the hypothesis than to see if they suspended me for the exact same language.”

After the account was locked, @SuspendThePres deleted the offending tweet, and 12 hours later, the account was back up and running.

A Twitter spokesperson said that the company is clear about how it differentiates between public figures and the general populous, and that @SuspendThePres was only temporarily locked out for violating its glorification of violence policy.

“If that’s what they want to name completely suspending an account for a limited timeframe so be it. The screenshots show that as well. Suspension of nearly all account features and deletion of content felt pretty suspended to me.”

@BizarreLazar says he’s going to keep on posing Trump’s tweets as his own to see how far he can take it.

“I think the experiment has raised a whole host of additional questions that I’d like to find the answers to,” they said. “Will Twitter continue to find the tweets in violation? How many times? How long does it take in general to remove offending content from the platform? Will Twitter shutdown the experiment permanently? Will Twitter be more/less/equally lenient towards future Presidents?”

You can keep up with his experiment, here.

There’s no more hiding, Twitter.

The company is doing a great deal more than Facebook, but that is a low bar indeed.

[source:vice]