- Twitter has permanently suspended President Donald Trump from accessing his account.
- Facebook moved to block Trump “indefinitely” on Thursday after a violent siege on the US Capitol.
- “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,” the company said in a tweet.
- Plans to storm the Capitol had been circulating on social-media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Parler in the weeks leading up to the attack.
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Twitter has permanently suspended President Donald Trump from accessing his account.
Twitter’s decision follows Facebook’s move on Thursday to block Trump “indefinitely.” The latter platform cited the risks to the president continuing to use the site. Facebook’s ban will last for at least the next two weeks, until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
“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,” the company said in a tweet.
—Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021
The actions by social-media platforms against Trump came two days after pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol as a joint session of Congress convened to certify the election results. The violent insurrection resulted in evacuations from the Capitol and five deaths.
As police worked to contain the rioters, Trump posted a video on Twitter in which he made a baseless claim of election fraud and told the rioters, “Go home. We love you; you’re very special.” Twitter said it was locking down Trump’s account until he deleted the tweet, along with two others, which he did sometime after the riots ended on Wednesday. The deletion started a 12-hour clock, after which Trump could regain access to his account.
Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won’t budge on Inauguration Day
But Twitter warned future violations of its policies on civic integrity and violent threats would result in a permanent suspension of his account.
Twitter faced mounting pressure to ban Trump’s account after the riots. The investor Chris Sacca tweeted that CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had “blood on your hands” for allowing content to remain on their platforms in the name of free speech. Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao tweeted: “Just ban him already.”
Plans to storm the Capitol had been circulating on social-media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Parler in the weeks leading up to the attack, with far-right extremists and QAnon conspiracy theorists posting about the date, January 6, on Twitter. According to BuzzFeed News, experts uncovered about 20,800 accounts mentioning the date.