Snapchat curtails Trump's presence as questions around social media's role proliferate

Brief:

Snapchat stopped promoting President Trump's account in a section of the image-messaging app dedicated to media companies and public figures, Axios reported. Trump's campaign swiftly condemned the move in a statement that called Snap CEO Evan Spiegel a "radical" and accused the company of trying to rig the election.
Snap decided to stop highlighting the president's account in the app's Discover section that consists of curated content from media outlets including ESPN, NBC News and iHeartRadio. Snap won't "amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion," a spokesperson said in a statement.
Trump's account is still available on Snapchat, making it fully accessible to people who use the image-messaging app or subscribe to the account, per Axios. Trump has about 1.5 million followers on Snapchat, Bloomberg News reported.

Insight:

It's not clear how Snap's decision to stop promoting Trump's account in its Discover section will affect mobile marketers, most of which are unlikely to make any kind of public statement of approval or disapproval for fear of alienating the millions of consumers who either support or oppose the president. Some marketers may view the decision as a positive move toward brand safety, in line with Snapchat's efforts to remove objectionable content from Discover.

Snap didn't specify which of Trump's posts were deemed objectionable, unlike Twitter, which has developed a labeling system to indicate when tweets contain inaccurate information or incite violence. Twitter last week labeled a Trump tweet about mail-in ballot fraud as possibly inaccurate, providing a link to a story by CNN about the issue. That decision led the president to sign an executive order aimed at weakening a law that protects social media companies from legal liability related to user posts, The Washington Post reported. The following weekend, Twitter marked a Trump tweet that many interpreted as a call to incite violence with a label that said: "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence."

Snap is the latest social media company to enter the fray with President Trump as the platforms debate whether his comments violate their content moderation policies. Facebook determined that Trump hadn't violated its rules, a decision that has ignited public condemnation of the social media giant and internal dissent. Talkspace, a provider of online therapy, this week ended its partnership talks with Facebook after the social network decided not to remove Trump's post. Some Facebook employees have responded by staging a "virtual walkout" or resigning from the company in protest.

The #deletefacebook hashtag started trending on Twitter, as it did when Facebook was mired in past scandals that ultimately didn't impede its revenue or user growth. It remains to be seen whether the latest controversy will affect Facebook, whose bigger threat is from the coronavirus pandemic's negative effect on ad spending.