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Enormous popularity! Over 12,000 tweets are calling for Trump's
assassination.


In the 12 days since Donald Trump took the oath of office, a steady stream
of social media posts have called for the new president's assassination.

The posts are pretty basic and many are jokes or sarcastic or hyperbolic --
but there are a lot of them. In a Dataminr search of Twitter posts since Inauguration Day containing the phrase "assassinate Trump" more than 12,000 tweets came up.


The U. S. Secret Service, however, or even Twitter and Facebook themselves, doesn't seem to be jumping onto many of these posts. When we asked several users about their recent "assassinate Trump" posts, all of them said they hadn't been contacted by anyone about their post and they all remain up.

But there have been reports of agents knocking on the doors of social media users. A Kentucky woman who tweeted, "If someone was cruel enough to assassinate MLK, maybe someone will be kind enough to assassinate Trump, "
is currently being investigated by the Secret Service, according to the Associated Press.

An Ohio man tweeted several messages about killing Trump on election night, according to NBC News. The Secret Service questioned him the next day and
he was charged with making threats to the then president-elect.
" "Its the people who have a true and genuine intent to do harm that the
Secret Service is worried about. " "

Former U. S. Secret Service special agent Tim Franklin, who is now a criminology and criminal justice professor of counterterrorism and
cybercrimes at Arizona State University, said in a phone call Tuesday that
"its the people who have a true and genuine intent to do harm that the
Secret Service is worried about. "

That's why one-off posts and people with no record of threatening messages
tend to get passed over. He said the Secret Service is looking out for
trends and consistent behavior, like the person who repeats their intent to kill the president over time. If someone has made threats in the past they
are more likely to get investigated when they post another "Kill Trump"
post.
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"They're not going to to beat down the door of everybody who makes a
negative Twitter comment, " Franklin said, which may be a relief to anyone
who tweeted an off-hand and not entirely serious death wish for the new president.

But for users who use certain language and specific details about the president, his location and how the assassination will happen, the Secret Service will likely take notice.

The U. S. Secret Service could not be reached for official comment about
how they handle social media posts threatening to assassinate the sitting president.

On the platform side, Facebook and Twitter have policies in place to take
down threatening posts. As Twitter said in an email statement, "The Twitter Rules prohibit threats of violence, and we will suspend accounts violating
that policy. " Facebook similarly said under their "credible threats
policy" they remove posts showing intent to kill the president.

Yet thousands of posts that use the words "kill" and "assassinate" remain
up -- most of them targeting the president no less. The platforms can't
seem to keep up with the influx of death threats and don't seem to be
upholding their own policies as strictly as they would like.upholding their
own policies as strictly as they would like.

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