Former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke declared victory Saturday after Twitter users reported his tweets for inciting violence against media reporters who wrote about the FBI search warrant executed on his email account.
The company apparently said that his tweets did not violate their rules.
In case you missed it, Clarke was set off over the weekend after news outlets, including Law&Crime, wrote about the FBI executing a search warrant dated in March. He was accused of misusing his authority as Milwaukee County Sheriff to bully a man after a plane flight. When we reached out to him for comment Friday, he told us he was no longer under investigation, and showed us a letter from federal prosecutors: Authorities said they were dropping the case against him due to lack of evidence. Usually, the story would die out, but Clarke lashed out on Twitter with tweets like this.
And this:
“When LYING LIB MEDIA makes up FAKE NEWS to smear me, the ANTIDOTE is go right at them,” he wrote. “Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD.”
Obviously, he was angry about reports about the warrant. At least one other Twitter user reported claimed online to have reported him for inciting violence with the tweets. Indeed, Clarke’s critics interpreted his posts as legitimately dangerous.
Here’s a post from former presidential candidate, conservative Evan McMullin:
Clarke defended his language by calling it a “metaphor.” According to him, Twitter didn’t think he broke the rules, and he put up a letter apparently from the company, which referenced the tweet about punching the “LYING LIB MEDIA.” Sure, the platform prohibits threats of violence, but it seems like they didn’t interpret the tweets this way.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a Law&Crime request for comment to clarify their rules. The company often catches flak for how it executes these policies. Critics, of all sorts of ideological stances, accuse the site of applying its harassment policy in inconsistent, or unfair ways. For example, right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro reported comedian Rosie O’Donnell, claiming he only wanted to to push back on the website being unfair to conservatives. Others, like Tablet magazine senior writer Yair Rosenberg, recently ripped the company for being soft on Nazi trolls using the platform.
Note: Twitter has since forced Clarke to take down the tweet.
[Screengrab via Fox News]