Alex Brandon/AP
- Twitter said it locked President Donald Trump’s account after he shared the email address of a New York Post columnist on the social media site Monday evening.
- President Trump praised a column by writer Miranda Devine in which she applauded the president for pushing through his battle with COVID-19.
- In a second, now deleted post, the president accidentally tweeted Devine’s email address, a move that Twitter confirmed to Business Insider violated its private information policy.
- Twitter said it prompted him to delete the tweet before his account could be unlocked.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Twitter said it locked President Donald Trump’s account after he shared the email address of a columnist Monday evening.
The president posted a tweet praising and quoting a column written in the New York Post by journalist Miranda Devine that ran on Sunday night. In the column, Devine praised Trump for overcoming his battle with the “Chinese virus” and committing to his duties as president following his diagnosis with COVID-19, of which health experts have said he is still not “out of the woods.”
Trump followed up his post with a now deleted tweet in which the president tacked on Devine’s email address, prompting what she told Sky News Australia was a barrage of abuse from people online.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
“People (were) just very angry a lot of them, and they’re furious about the fact Donald Trump has actually seemingly beaten the coronavirus,” she said according to Sky News.
Twitter confirmed to Business Insider in an email that it then locked the president’s account following his sharing of Devine’s email address after it found the tweet violated its private information policy. The policy forbids users from publishing or posting “other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”
Per the company's policy, an account whose owner violates the rules will remain locked until the tweet is deleted. President Trump continued to tweet often through Tuesday morning, including a post calling to "REPEAL SECTION 230," an internet law that protects tech companies like Twitter and Facebook from being liable for the content posted on their platforms.
Spokespeople for the White House and for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Trump has tweeted frequent throughout his presidency, and he currently has 87 million followers on the platform. But Trump has also had a rocky relationship with Twitter as the company has cracked down on claims Trump has made on the platform.
For example, Twitter removed a tweet on Tuesday in which Trump falsely stated that COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu. The company said the post included potentially misleading information. Twitter also said it would remove any posts in which users wished for Trump to die of the coronavirus disease, a move that received backlash, as some said Twitter has chosen to let other threats go without enforcement in the past.
Trump and other Republicans continue to claim that anti-conservative bias is rampant in Big Tech. The president signed an executive order in May threatening to give regulators the power to tweak Section 230 after Twitter fact-checked two of his tweets that included false claims about mail-in voting. Experts said Trump had "absolutely no legal authority" to regulate tech companies when he disagrees with them.
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