【1991 Archives】

Poor Donald Trump.

Even the most optimistic forecasts for Tuesday's election only give him a one-in-three chance of winning991 Archivesnow he's suffered the indignity of having his Twitter account taken away from him by those running his campaign.

Sad!

But there's a case to be made that the campaign shouldn't have stepped in and interfered with Trump's tweeting tirades. Sure, his tweets are full of insults and horrible invective, but there are a few reasons why they should just hand him back his phone and let him get on with it.

It's too late, so why stop now?

Seriously, this is the guy who retweeted white supremacists and a Mussolini tweetbot, and dropped a pre-sunrise tweetstorm accusing a Miss Universe contestant of having a sex tape (it was totally unsubstantiated). You're going to try to convince us that he's a totally chill guy who has no temper problem now?

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The cat's out of the bag. We all know what we're getting with Trump by this point and cutting off his access to Twitter isn't going to suddenly change our minds about the guy. And people who support Trump don't follow him on Twitter because he's refined. They want the Trump that "tells it like it is."

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Give the people, all of them, what they want: an unfiltered view of an unmitigated tire fire of a campaign.

The Tao of Trump

With a guy like Trump firing any and every thought he has out on Twitter, you're going to get a lot of strange stuff along with the political messages. It's not often that a major party presidential candidate can drop knowledge like this on Twitter.

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But it's not just his celebrity gossip that has people reading. There's body-shaming, too!

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It's not quite Confucius but...

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Trump made Twitter relevant in an election

There's been a lot made of how Twitter is struggling, especially in the era of Snapchat. But Trump's use of Twitter as an outlet for whatever the hell seems to pop into his brain at any damn moment has galvanized Twitter users to swarm to the service when something happened.

Admit it: Every time a new controversy erupted or something weird happened on the trail, your first instinct was to grab some popcorn and tune into his account just to see how he reacted.

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Not only that, but many users, this site included, used Twitter to disseminate what Trump (as well as his followers) was doing and saying. Sure, it's hard to get nuance into 140 characters, but nuance is not something Trump is really known for.

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Reporters like CBS's Sopan Deb and NBC's Katy Tur have shared quotes, images, and videos from Trump's (many, many) controversial moments. Every time Trump said something dumb or threatening -- which was often -- the moments were instantly within arms reach of a user.

And it wasn't just Trump who benefitted from Twitter. Hillary Clinton's team found a way to use her Twitter account to respond to Trump's Twitter account in terms that "the kids these days" understand. (Just be thankful neither candidate used the phrase "on fleek.")

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Trump (and his supporters) highlighted Twitter's biggest flaw

But here's the flip-side to that previous point: Twitter has long had a horrendous harassment problem, an issue that got even more attention thanks to Trump and the outrageous behavior of his supporters (especially when Trump surrogates fan the flames on Twitter).

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The harassment that takes place on social media platforms is inexcusable yet inescapable and it's hardly limited to the realm of politics (see this summer's attack on actress Leslie Jones).

But the vitriol of this election year has brightened the spotlight on Twitter's abuse problem at a time when the company sure could have used good press. Both Disney and SalesForce reportedly backed off potential offers to buy the platform over worries that trolls and abuse could harm the new parent company's brand.

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I can't imagine why neither Mickey Mouse or Marc Benioff would want to be attached to a social media platform where the above kind of interactions are the rule, not the exception.

And until Twitter fixes this problem, the 2016 election will stand as a dark, pivotal moment in the platform's history.