If only to ensure he filters his proclamations through more conventional media outlets?
My take is that Twitter etc enables this shitstain to puke his stuff without any checks or balances, but if he were confined to reporting to regular news-sources, at least the journalists would be able to call him to task on his more cray-cray stuff.
Dunno, up to being called on this…ideas??
Should he? Probably, but would they want a target on their chest?
However, it’s amazing to me that he’s using Twitter to humiliate us (Australia) and basically trying his hardest to destroy our alliance. I can’t believe I’m living in this world.
Why is it Twitter’s responsibility “to ensure that he filters his proclamations through more conventional media outlets”?
Yes, they’re enabling him to puke his stuff, etc, etc, but that’s their whole business model. It’s what they do.
I do not think that the American people can look to Twitter to save the fools from the knave they have elected.
*… enables this shitstain…
*
Poison the well much? Shut off Twitter and he’ll just find another outlet. And draw MORE attention to him. And give him a REAL reason to think the media is out to get him. Terrible idea.
Personally, if someone using my website were a public and very loud national security risk, I would probably shut down their account. It’s not really twitter’s “responsibility”, but it’s just the right thing to do. They probably won’t - Trump gives them countless views - but giving a public platform to his stream-of-consciousness rantings can be outright dangerous. I would’ve banned him after that Taiwan kerfluffle on the grounds of “Twitter does not advocate dangerous diplomatic positions being made on our social media.”
Should all the people on the left, resisting Trump, delete their Twitter accounts in protest? Think what a powerful message that would send! And since Twitter enables Trump, isn’t it the right thing to do?
Nah, he wouldn’t notice or care.
I think it’s good that he keeps tweeting. With every tweet he reveals what an idiot he is. And I don’t want that lost from public consciousness. I don’t want the sanitized, corrected message to be put out by his staff. I want the shit to come straight from the horse’s… er… mouth.
Should Twitter ban the POTUS? No, for so many reasons. Should they ban all controversial personalities? Or just those with a lot of power?
Imagine Trump had zero followers on Twitter. Do you think his message would be stifled? Twitter may, in fact, be the most harmless form of communication. It could probably be worse.
Wish granted. 
It’s not about “controversial personalities”. It’s about shit like this:
It’s hard to put any *thought *into 140 characters. This president doesn’t even try.
This is a brilliant idea. If twitter shut down his account, there is no other possible way he could broadcast his ideas. It is not like he could set up on another social media site, or create his own web page.
I mean, I blocked his twitter months ago. It doesn’t really change how much I hear about him, but I really enjoyed reading “You have blocked @donaldjtrump”.
Should they shut him down? No. He’s the President, that’s not a direction I think they want to go in. Will they? Not a chance. This is a little different than shutting down a neo-nazi group.
Ugh. Of course not.
The most obvious practical reason is that it wouldn’t accomplish anything except pissing off Trump and his supporters. It’s not like there aren’t hundreds of other websites that he can use to post his every rambling thought. So do you think that Facebook and Tumblr and Snapchat and on and on should then also ban his account? And even if they did, the federal government runs web servers!
The idea that you can somehow force someone to go through the proper channels is foolish. There are no gatekeepers any more. The internet has democratized communication.
The philosophical reason not to do so is that the solution to bad speech is not censorship or suppression, but more speech. I admit that it looks fairly bleak right now, but limiting speech is not the solution. And just to head off the next comment, yes, I know what the First Amendment says, and no, I’m not arguing that Twitter is bound by it. The philosophical principle of Free Speech is much broader than the specific protections in the First Amendment.
There’s a reason that this isn’t the quote misattributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it (unless the platform on which you say it is commercial rather than public).”
For those who think banning him from Twitter is a good idea, why do you think Twitter is under some type of special rules that other forms of media (traditional or not) are not obgliated to follow?
Like the Taiwan thing. Yes, Trump has no clue what he’s doing and the world could end in nuclear war at any moment because of what a bad job he is doing… but the Taiwan phone call was reported on every single news outlet in the country and maybe the world. Why is Trump typing about Taiwan on Twitter truly terrible, but 24/7 news coverage of the same event acceptable?
Should Twitter the business be obligated to ban someone because some would see it as a social good? No, because that’s not what they are in business for. They have rules that, when broken, they can choose to ban accounts. If and when he breaks them, they would be perfectly in the right in banning his account, though still not obligated to unless it is written as such in their rules.
Should the people who are in a position to ban Trump be obligated to do so as citizens of America because some would see it as a social good? I still don’t think so, but the case would probably be slightly better. They could and some would say should, but that would come with obvious consequences for the business they work for and thus them.
Explain this to me from a techie perspective.
If you were following him, wouldn’t you just “unfollow” him in order not to see his tweets? And if you weren’t following him, why were you seeing his tweets?
I have a Twitter account, but I only follow about four people. Theirs are the only tweets I see (unless they retweet someone else’s). I don’t have any followers and if I post, which is extremely rare, it’s a direct message to one of the four that I follow.
Functionally it did nothing to my feed or his. It just made me feel good to specifically ban him from my corner of twitter. He’ll never know or care but that’s ok.
I don’t follow Trump on Twitter, never have, but I’ve still managed to see a hell of a lot of his tweets over the last 18 months. Just not on the Twitter app.
This seems unlikely to change if Twitter were to ban him.
I mean, ok, technically, you wouldn’t see his idiocy in the form of tweets, but it’s not like he’d just shut up about it, or that whatever media sources are broadcasting his tweets right now would fail to continue broadcasting him in some new form.