US President Donald Trump
US President Donald TrumpREUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The US President Donald Trump is an avid Twitter user.

While many believe that he used the popular microblogging platform to help propel himself to victory in the US presidential election in November last year, there are also allegations that he has exploited the service to spread his often fact-free rants.

Read Now! Donald Trump signs executive order to roll back Barack Obama's climate change policies

While Trump shows no sign of stopping, his opponents have also come up with witty replies to his specious statements to vent their own frustration. But the frequency of Trump's tweets apparently makes it a challenging task to track each of his Twitter statements and trash it with a fitting reply.

So why not just burn anything and everything that Trump tweets? Well, a new Twitter account @burnedyourtweet is doing exactly that.

The account replies to each Trump tweet saying "I burned your tweet", and posts a short video showing a robot printing the tweet, grabbing it with a mechanical arm and setting it on fire before dumping it in an ashtray.

This is rude! But that's what the anti-Trump entity behind the robot probably wants to convey.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the machine so far, but the message is quite clear – Trump's words weigh so little that they don't even deserve a manual burning.

The mysterious Twitter account was started at a time when there's a growing consensus that Twitter helped promoting Trump. And the claim does have a solid foundation.

Trump is at home on Twitter

Trump joined Twitter in 2009, and before winning the GOP nomination, his tweets were usually deemed as a mere source of entertainment from a rich, loudmouth businessman. But he successfully managed to use the platform for the expansion of his personal brand, which eventually gave him a digital ride to the White House.

Trump never cared about his clumsily constructed, and sometimes misspelt tweets. He has reportedly insulted 305 people (the number is growing) on Twitter ever since he declared his intention to run for president in 2015. Despite all these, Twitter always worked for him.

Look at the graph below which shows how the number of his Twitter followers has skyrocketed over the last few years, especially after he became the President of the United States of America.

And how often does Trump tweet? Look at this second graph.

While Trump continues to attract more followers on Twitter, the calls to boot him from the social network have also strengthened. A petition, calling for Trump's ouster from Twitter, has so far garnered over 57,000 signatures while a recent NBC/WSJ poll indicated that about 70 per cent of Americans want Trump to stop tweeting.

But Trump's account remains active

There were reports in December suggesting that Twitter might ban Trump, who was the President-elect at that time, if he breaks the company's rules with his tweets.

"The Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies," a Twitter spokesperson told Slate.

However, despite his outspoken words, Trump is clever enough to stay within Twitter's rules of conduct.

But those rules are changing. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who opposed Trump's immigration ban on majority-Muslim countries, announced new measures in January to better address harassment on the site.

We don't know if and when Dorsey will reconsider Trump's access to the platform. But until he does something on that front, it is important users don't overlook the power Twitter provides us to question or answer authorities directly.

We can't blacklist @realDonaldTrump, but at least we can set up a robot and make the world see it burning an unrelenting torrent of Trump tweets. And that's quite satisfying for many.

Also Read