Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s social media account on Friday afternoon, citing the risk of further incitement of violence.
The decision comes in the wake of Trump’s encouragement of a rally in Washington, DC, that resulted in a mob storming the Capitol building and at least five deaths. For years, the president has used his Twitter account to reach his nearly 90 million now-former followers on the platform as a means to bypass traditional media. Many critics have long argued that Twitter should take a firmer stance against Trump due to his dangerous use of the platform to spread lies and violent rhetoric. While some may see the move as too little, too late, and Trump’s supporters are questioning it entirely, it nevertheless marks a historic exertion of Twitter’s ability to influence politics during a time when the strength of democracy in the US is being seriously tested.
“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,” read a company blog post on Friday explaining the decision. Despite the fact that Twitter has generally allowed world leaders like Trump to post more controversial content than the average user since their tweets are deemed newsworthy, the company said that these accounts are still “not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things.”
Ahead of the permanent ban, Twitter had previously temporarily suspended Trump’s tweets on Wednesday for violating its policies on civic integrity and violence, and warned that it may permanently suspend him if he continued to violate its policies. Now, users can no longer see Trump’s tweets, and the president is unable to post on his account.
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021
The move comes as hundreds of Twitter’s own employees urged CEO Jack Dorsey to suspend Trump permanently, according to a report by the Washington Post.
The day before Twitter’s permanent suspension, Facebook blocked Trump’s account on its platform, which has tens of millions of followers, from posting and emphasized that the ban would be in place for at least two weeks until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Recent events leading to the decision
Twitter’s official explanation for why it permanently blocked Trump’s account was that his last two tweets violated the company’s Glorification of Violence policy and were part of a broader pattern of encouraging violence during the transition of presidential powers. Twitter specifically cited a concern that Trump’s followers seemed to interpret his announcement about not attending Biden’s inauguration as a signal that it would be a “safe” target for violent acts.
The first tweet that pushed Trump past Twitter’s tipping point stated that he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. The second declared that the “75,000,000 great American Patriots” who voted for Trump would not be “disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Twitter said that, when read in the broader context of the recent violence in DC and how Trump’s tweets can be mobilized by his followers to incite further violence, those two tweets impelled the platform to suspend his account…
https://www.vox.com/recode/22221543/twitter-suspended-trump-account-permanent-ban?utm_source=pocket-newtab