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By 26 September 2017 | Categories: news

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What to do about a tweet threatening to set off a potential nuclear war? According to the Twitter PublicPolicy account, keep it up because it’s newsworthy. In a series of tweets, Twitter explained why the following message from US President Donald Trump was not taken down, even though it appears to violate Twitter’s Terms of Service.

Twitter believes that the tweet is newsworthy and of public interest, and since this has guided internal policy in the past, the tweet was not taken down. However, this policy is not yet reflected in their public rules, with Twitter stating, “[…] we'll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it.”

North Korea has not taken to kindly to Trump’s tweet, with Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho stating that it amounts to a declaration of war, according to NPR. Ri went on to say, “Because the United States declared war, even if U.S. strategic bombers do not intrude into our air, we will possess the right to respond in self-defense, including the right to launch at a random time and drop [the strategic bomber]."

Twitter’s ‘newsworthy’ policy would then basically allow all tweets coming from President Trump’s smartphone to remain posted. As to who else Twitter will provide this type of leeway to remains to be seen. 

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