President Donald Trump’s warning that “an entire civilization will die” is the starkest example of his use of his personal online platform to threaten his enemies — free from the social media restrictions that once hindered him.
Unlike six years ago, when Trump’s posts about the shooting of looters in Minnesota, the 2020 election or COVID-19 misinformation led to fines from Twitter and Facebook, the president faced no repercussions Tuesday for his latest. satya social post Threat of retaliation against Iran. Meanwhile, major social media networks — including
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment, and X did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
At Truth Social, that’s a service Launched more than a year after his first term endedTrump has a megaphone with which whatever message he chooses can be picked up by media around the world.
And because Trump sets the rules, they know their content will remain in place no matter what rules any other platform chooses to impose, said Katie Harbath, a technical advisor and former longtime public policy director at Facebook’s Native Meta.
“From a strategic standpoint, it gives him the most leverage to get his messages out without worrying about whether other people controlling other platforms are allowing him the access he wants,” Harbath said.
one in next post Late Tuesday night, Trump used Truth Social to announce a two-week ceasefire.
Of Tuesday’s Iran post, he said: “If this had happened in his first term, I think people would be a lot more concerned about whether a post like this should remain or not.”
Truth Social’s user base is relatively small – a There were an estimated 6.3 million active users as of a year agocompared with 3 billion monthly users It received lukewarm reviews on Facebook — and after its launch, including some personal complaints from Trump himself, according to a previous report by Politico. But it does provide his supporters and the media an unfiltered glimpse into Trump’s thinking.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, “President Trump is the most accessible and transparent president in history, and the entire world appreciates his straight line into his thought process.” “In this case, President Trump has been clear about what will happen if Iran fails to reach a deal, which would lead to a response unlike anything the regime has seen before.”
For Trump, it is also a defense against the threat that the currently cowed Silicon Valley giants will resume their previous efforts to limit the president’s speech.
During Trump’s first term, social media companies maintained at least the pretense of theoretical content moderation, said Nu Wexler, a technology consultant and former employee of Facebook, Twitter and Google. Now, the political cost has become very high after facing a backlash over accusations of censoring Republican viewpoints, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The companies did not change their content policies to promote free expression,” Wexler told POLITICO. “That was because the political costs of implementing them against President Trump became too high. Moderation frameworks that took years to build were always dependent on a political threat scenario, and that changed dramatically in 2024.”
Tech companies have long struggled with how global leaders draw red lines and how content moderation rules apply to them.
Trump, an avid Twitter user during his first term,threatened North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with nuclear war in a 2018 tweet – writing “I also have a nuclear button, but it’s much bigger and more powerful than that, and my button works!” Although the post directly violated Twitter’s policy on violent threats at the time refused to ban Trump cited the “newsworthiness” and “public interest” of his posts from the platform.
But the platforms eventually became more aggressive.
In May 2020, amid anti-police brutality protests following the death of George Floyd, Twitter accused Trump of “glorifying violence” for a tweet in which he warned that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Twitter’s violence warning label, and other decisions by Twitter and Facebook to label, remove or limit the spread of some of their messages, provoked a furious response from Trump, who issued a massive executive order aimed at punishing social media companies that censor political messages. Trump also pressured Congress — unsuccessfully — to repeal key legal liability protections for online companies, a crusade that continued even after he lost the 2020 election.
Trump has had very close relations with tech industry giants in his second term, due to which no such drama has been seen between the White House and big social media companies.
Still, Truth Social remains as a backstop if needed.
Crystal Patterson, CEO and president of public relations firm Washington Media Group, who was head of global civic engagement at Facebook, said the presidential social media platform is doing exactly what Trump wanted it to do in getting his message across to the public.
Patterson said, “But I also think that even if he hadn’t done that, he would have had no problem getting people to pay attention to what he’s focused on.”
