Ever since it fact-checked President Trump last week, Twitter has been accused of applying its rules inconsistently and letting political bias seep into its content moderation decisions.
And now, when Twitter users search for the word “racist” in the “People” section of Twitter search, Trump’s @realDonald Trump account is being displayed as the top result at the time of writing.
The development follows a series of recent content moderation decisions that have amplified criticism of Twitter for being biased against Trump and his allies.
Yesterday, the platform hid a tweet from Congressman Matt Gaetz behind a warning label for violating the Twitter rules about “glorifying violence” and gave a Trump tweet the same treatment last week.
Twitter’s fact-checking of Trump’s tweets, hiding the tweets of him and his allies behind warning labels, and now even displaying his profile at the top of the search results for “racist” has all happened within the last seven days and is likely to further amplify concerns that Twitter is allowing apparent bias against the president to influence the actions it takes against certain accounts and tweets.
These concerns are further compounded by Twitter’s failure to take action against calls for violence or endorsements of violence from other accounts and even world leaders such as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with Twitter allowing these tweets to remain on the platform without any warning labels.
As Twitter takes action against these politicians while not sanctioning other tweets, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey has also alluded to ideological motives. Shortly after Trump’s tweet was hidden behind this warning label, Dorsey liked a tweet that praised the decision and stated: “Twitter is speaking truth to power.”
