President Donald Trump’s next tweet might come with a warning label.

Starting from Thursday, tweets that Twitter deems to involve matters of public interest, but which violate the service’s rules, will be obscured by a warning explaining the violation and Twitter’s reasons for publishing it anyway. Users will have to tap through the warning to see the underlying message.

Twitter said the new policy applies to all government officials, candidates, and similar public figures with more than 100,000 followers.

The new stance could fuel additional Trumpian ire towards social media. The President routinely complains, without evidence, that social media sites are biased against him and other conservatives.

Twitter’s rules prohibit threatening violence against a person or group, engaging in “targeted harassment of someone”, or inciting others to do so, such as wishing a person is harmed. It prohibits hate speech against a group based on race, ethnicity, gender or other categories, and disallows the threatening or promoting of terrorism.

The company has long exempted public figures from many of its usual rules, contending that publishing controversial tweets from politicians encourages discussion and helps hold leaders accountable .

But there have been longstanding calls to remove Trump from the service for what activists and others have said is abusive and threatening behaviour. This week, for example, the President posted that an attack by Iran “will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration”.

Trump has used Twitter to attack his enemies, issuing tweets that may violate these policies, including calling an ex-staffer a “lowlife”, tweeting a video of himself beating up a man with a CNN logo replacing his head.