US President Donald Trump is trending on Twitter after his account was banned permanently. A visit to his handle @realdonaldtrump shows the message “Account suspended”. Twitter says Trump’s account has been suspended “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”
The company also said it arrived at the decision after closely reviewing Trump’s latest tweets.
President Trump has been facing social media censure since the attack of the government premises at Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Trump took to social media to support the protesters, calling them patriots over acts that US citizens felt he should have condemned strongly.
Trump is disputing the outcome of the general election held in November where Joe Biden emerged the winner. His allegations that the election was fraudulent saw Georgia go for a re-run, where he lost again.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced that Trump’s account had been suspended indefinitely on both Instagram and Facebook.
Through his official Facebook account, Zuckerberg condemned the recent events that had resulted in the death of four people.
“Trump’s decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect -and likely their effect- would be to prove violence.” Zuckerberg wrote.
Twitter had blocked Trump from accessing his account on Thursday, but allowed him back on Friday. However, despite warnings and his previous tweets being removed, he went ahead and sent out two more tweets which the company saw as the last straw.
The first tweet said: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
According to Twitter, the tweet was an indication “that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an ‘orderly transition.”
The second tweet said: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
“We’re aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the US,” a Google spokesperson said.
“We recognize that there can be reasonable debate about content policies and that it can be difficult for apps to immediately remove all violative content, but for us to distribute an app through Google Play, we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content. In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app’s listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues.”
Many of Trump’s supporters had moved their discussions to the app. iOS is reportedly considering taking down the app as well although they have not issued any statement.
