On a solution for Twitter vis a vis Trump: a modest proposal. Caveat: in general, it's bad form to swoop in and declare you have a "simple solution." But I'm just not seeing the complexity to this issue. So my solution is simple. /1

Twitter miscalculated when they decided that Trump's personal account was "newsworthy" because he is the president. As a result, they decided his personal account is not subject to the same scrutiny as other others. /2

Conflating his personal account with his official position has led to where we are, a situation in which Trump's personal account can tweet whatever he wants, no matter how vile, false, or profoundly detrimental to the public sphere. /3

Twitter has boxed itself into a corner. There is a way out. One that gets Twitter off the hook of policing the president's speech and, at the same time, moves Trump's speech into the official sphere (where it rightly belongs). /4

Twitter just needs to treat Trump's personal account as a regular account subject to the same rules as any other user. This is not censorship or limitation of Trump's speech. /5

Trump has access to many Twitter accounts, including the presidential and White House Twitter accounts. If he wants to speak in his role as president, he should (rightly) use those accounts. /6

Twitter would say "use your official account for saying whatever you want w/o limitation, but we'll treat your personal account exactly the way we do other people's accounts." The result likely would be that Trump's personal account would be banned or significantly limited. /7

So what? Trump can simply tweet whatever he wants from his official accounts. Those accounts are subject to (some) rules/laws such that government entities would monitor them + enforce rules. This lets Twitter off the hook of "policing the president's speech". /8

If Twitter were to enforce this distinction, it would have enormous public benefit. Shifting Trump's speech to official accounts would require U.S. politicians to grapple publicly with Trump's speech (vs shrugging them off as "personal statements"). /9

For too long, U.S. politicians have hidden behind the notion that Trump's personal account is personal speech. As a result, they don't respond to it, much less acknowledge this. If Trump were forced to use official gov accounts, politicians would no longer be able to hide. /10

Forcing Trump to use official accounts is also likely to clarify U.S. policy for the world. If it comes from the pres or White House accounts, it's official policy. World leaders + people wouldn't be confused about what is official policy + what is "personal speech." /10

Twitter is well within their rights to enforce a division between personal + official accounts. It's not censorship to hold Trump's personal account to the same standards as the rest of us, while reserving limited scrutiny for his official gov accounts. /11

I'm sure people at Twitter think they're between a rock and a hard place. That's only so because they've allowed the personal Trump account to stand in for the presidential account. They don't need to do that. It's that simple. /end

PS - I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decipher the several typos in this thread.