Jack Dorsey was informed in advance of decision to tag Donald Trump's tweet

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was informed in advance by the company's staff of a decision to tag a tweet by President Donald Trump as "glorifying violence", a spokeswoman for the company said.

"The decision was made jointly by teams within Twitter, and our CEO Jack Dorsey was informed of the plan before the Tweet was labelled," the spokeswoman said in an email.

Twitter’s decision to step in escalates a feud between Trump and tech companies. It came hours after Trump signed an executive order threatening Silicon Valley social media firms with new free speech regulations, amid a fight with Twitter after the company added a fact-checking tag to his tweets this week about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail-in voting.

It also comes at a time of racially-charged civil unrest in cities across the United States over the death of George Floyd, a black man seen on video gasping for breath while a white police officer knelt on his neck.

Trump’s tweet labeled by Twitter read: “...These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

Twitter also hid a later tweet from the official White House Twitter account that repeated the message.