Update:
Snapchat has moved to take action against President Trump as well, locking his account after the recent dispute at the United States Capital.
Before:
Twitter, after months of disputes with the soon to be ex-president Donald Trump, has finally decided to block his account, after he made controversial tweets about an incident in the Capitol building which led to the death of 1 woman. The account has not been permanently suspended yet, with the ban only being applicable for 12 hours. Facebook has also taken note of the remarks, and blocked the President’s account for 24 hours.
President Trump has been flailing conspiracy theories about the election being stolen ever since the results were announced back in November. He has used platforms like Twitter and Facebook to air his grievances, and claimed that the 2020 presidential elections were rigged.
All of this resulted in his followers taking over the Capitol building and causing havoc. President Trump addressed this, and while he asked the rioters to not resort to violence, he also said that he loved them, asking them to go back home.
Twitter asked the President to take down 3 posts that were deemed as “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy”. This led to his account being blocked by the company for a 12 hour time period (at least for now). Later, the posts were taken down by the President, since Twitter had warned that it would extend the block period if they were still up.
Moreover, Twitter said that future violations of its rules will lead to permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.
Facebook, which has had a mixed stance on the President’s posts before, also decided to block his account for 24 hours. The company also said that it is looking for and removing content that incited or supported the storming of Capitol Hill.
Moreover, the three controversial posts that have since been removed by Trump also contained a video, which was uploaded shortly after the Capitol building incident. In the video, he remained adamant about his claims of election fraud, which led to an immediate removal by YouTube since it “violated policies on spreading election fraud”.
Twitter on the other hand did not take down this video initially, and only took away the ability to like, retweet and comment on it. However, it was took down later, along with the President’s account.
