AOC: Twitter tweaked rules to protect Trump after ‘go back to where you came from’ slur

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday revealed that Twitter changed its abusive content rules to avoid punishing former President Donald Trump when he tweeted that she should “go back” to where she came from.

The fiery American-born progressive lawmaker got an ex-Twitter employee to concede that bosses overruled her decision that Trump’s tweet violated rules barring hate speech against immigrants.

Days later, the social media giant scrapped a clause that mentioned the phrase Trump used as an example of xenophobic abuse that should not be tolerated.

“So much for bias against the right wing on Twitter,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The salvo from Ocasio-Cortez came during a Republican-led hearing that mostly focused on Twitter’s actions to limit the spread of a dubious story about presidential son Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020.

Twitter executives admitted overreacting to the laptop story because they believed the platform needed to guard against allowing suspected disinformation to swing the presidential election.

Republicans have long believed that the incident points to liberal bias at Twitter before its purchase by right-wing tech mogul Elon Musk.

Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, have sought to hold social media’s feet to the fire for not doing enough to prevent the spread of hate speech and misinformation on their platforms.

Trump tweeted the ugly attack on Ocasio-Cortez and three other members of her progressive “Squad” of women of color in July 2019.

Although he didn’t name them, Trump accused the four of hating America and suggested they should return to their homelands.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?” he asked.

Ocasio-Cortez and two other women lawmakers were born in the U.S. A fourth, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was born in Somalia and is a naturalized American citizen.

Ocasio-Cortez quizzed Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee with Twitter’s content moderation team, about the offending Trump tweet.

“What did you conclude?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.

“We [found] Donald Trump in violation of Twitter’s policies,” Navaroli replied.

“A day or two later, Twitter seemed to have changed their policies, didn’t they?” Ocasio-Cortez continued.

“Yes, that trope ‘Go back to where you came from’ was removed from the content moderation guidance as an example,” Navaroli said.

“So Twitter changed their own policy after the president violated it in order to potentially accommodate his tweet,” the congresswoman concluded.