After banning President Donald Trump and other conservatives from its platform on Friday, Twitter allowed the phrase “Hang Pence” to trend on the site, and as of Saturday, the trend is still up.
Twitter’s rationale for banning the president was that he risked inciting violence with his presence online following Wednesday’s Capitol incursion. But the company hasn’t explained why such a vile and threatening trend is still taking over the site.
Reporter Yashar Ali, who is no conservative, called out the company for the violent language spreading on the platform.
“WTF why is this allowed to trend? I get that people have been tweeting it to quote some of the insurrectionists but it shouldn’t be allowed to trend,” Ali asked.
A screen shot of the trend showed that at the time, “Hang Pence” had been tweeted more than 14,000 times. That number currently stands at 83,000 such tweets.
Fox News contributor Sarah Carter also had questions about the “Hang Pence” trend. Carter called out Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey by name.
“Why @Jack is Hang Pence still trending? Hey Google didn’t you remove Parler because of something similar – why is Twitter getting such special treatment ( : ,” she tweeted.
The fact that Twitter is allowing the phrase to trend is raising eyebrows elsewhere, as the users Twitter hasn’t banned yet for apparently being conservative want some answers.
According to Steven Dennis, a reporter with Bloomberg, the phrase is trending because of a video which showed Trump supporters chanting the phrase before the Capitol incursion on Wednesday.
“Hang Pence’ is trending because of a viral video of a riotous mob chanting those words as they violently entered the Capitol,” wrote Dennis.
But despite what might have been uttered on Wednesday by some who were in Washington Wednesday to protest certifying the election results, the tweets definitely violate Twitter’s selectively enforced on policies advocating for violence. Those policies were of course used in justifying Trump’s lifetime ban.
Is there anything more capable of inspiring violence than logging on to social media and seeing a phrase calling for the lynching of the vice president permeating across the platform? This appears to be another example of Twitter’s unequal application of policies allegedly meant to protect users’ safety and the safety of those off the platform.
But what is Twitter, if not hypocritical?
