How Twitter made its own rules for Trump to break

The fact that Twitter hasn’t taken action on a Trump tweet until now, despite abundant opportunities, shows that the company has reservations of its own about taking on @realdonaldtrump and his loud and loyal followers. With Trump ordering the executive branch to reexamine the rules Twitter and its competitors rely on to do business, the costs of confrontation are clear (even if that executive order is more threat than punishment). — Bloomberg

When Twitter slapped a warning label over US President Donald Trump’s tweet Thursday night about riots in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, the company’s official explanation was that the president had violated a rule prohibiting “glorification of violence”. But that justification doesn’t explain why Twitter chose to leave the tweet on the site for people to see, or why it blocked the ability to write replies, or why past tweets seemingly breaking the same rule were allowed to stand unaltered.

To understand those decisions, you would have to know Twitter’s other rules. There are plenty of them.