Twitter took censorship of Trump to new heights in 2020. Certainly, censorship of the president is not new, with analysis showing that Twitter has censored him at least 625 times since May 31, 2018, while Biden has not been censored once in that time.
A tweet on Oct. 26 criticizing mail-in voting set a new precedent, though. The tweet read: “Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd.” Twitter placed an interstitial filter over the tweet, indicating that “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process. Learn more[.]” This filter must be clicked through just to read the tweet.
Twitter disabled the link to the story, calling it potentially unsafe, and then it censored the Post, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump Campaign and even the House Judiciary Committee for sharing it. Twitter also locked the Post out of its account unless it agreed to delete the tweet, which it refused to do. Twitter later unblocked the story, and it finally unlocked the Post’s account after 17 days.