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Searching Twitter for 'racist' brings up Trump's account

Searching Twitter for 'racist' brings up Trump's account

Amid protests across the US over the death of African-American George Floyd, a search for the term "racist" on Twitter shows President Donald Trump's official Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, at the top under the "People" tab.

Several other accounts that featured in the search had the words "racist" or "racism" in their Twitter name or biographies.

A Twitter spokeswoman told CNET that if users mention an account alongside certain terms, the account and the keywords can surface together in search recommendations due to the way search algorithms are configured.

A Twitter search also suggests that many people using the world "racist" have also been mentioning Trump's account, said the report on Friday.

Tensions between Trump and Twitter escalated ever since Twitter had last introduced fact checks that showed up on Trump's tweets last month.

Trump later signed an executive order threatening to slash protections for social media companies.

Twitter then flagged a tweet by Trump for violating its rules on glorification of violence.

Facebook did not take any action when the tweets were cross posted to its platform.

But both the platforms disabled a Trump campaign video over copyright violations that slammed "radical leftwing groups" for the protests across the US.

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Tags: Twitter Donald Trump Racism racist