Controversy erupted in the United States following Twitter’s decision to permanently cancel President Donald Trump’s account, citing the risks of “further incitement to violence” following the deadly uprising at the federal Capitol on Wednesday.
Shannon McGregor, an associate professor of journalism and media at the University of North Carolina, said the move allows Twitter to try to deal with the Biden administration. Trump “has only two weeks in power, and that certainly makes it easier to remove the president from the platform,” he said.
While Trump could migrate to another alternative platform to Twitter, such as Parler or Gab, this will greatly limit his influence, McGregor said. Trump has always longed for legitimacy and position in the mainstream media, despite his complaints about the traditional work of journalists, which he has long termed “fake news.” You don’t get that on other platforms, the professor said.
Others saw a more sinister omen in the Twitter action. “Tech Bigs don’t stop with the President of the United States,” tweeted Kay James, president of the conservative group The Heritage Foundation. “They can ban you and anyone reading this.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, who leads the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said Friday that killing Trump via Twitter was an “excellent step” and “a fitting end to a legacy of hatred and criticism. Malicious.” ADL was part of a coalition of advocacy and civil rights groups that asked Twitter on Friday to end Trump’s account.
Twitter, long accused of treating the president lukewarm, began following Trump’s tweets more vigorously from the early days of the presidential campaign, when the company started actively tagging its fake tweets about alleged voter fraud. widespread and claimed to be dubious. An actual permanent suspension would have been almost unimaginable, at least until he lost his bid for re-election.
Twitter had long ago given Trump and other world leaders wide exceptions to its rules, prohibiting personal attacks, hate speech and other conduct, but in a statement posted on its blog on Friday, the company said Trump’s recent tweets amounted to a glorification. of violence when read in the context of the Capitol riots and the plans circulating online for future armed protests surrounding the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
The social network has come under increasing pressure to crack down on Trump after Wednesday’s violence. On Thursday, Facebook suspended Trump’s account until January 20, and possibly indefinitely. Twitter initially suspended the president’s account for 12 hours after he published a video reiterating false allegations of electoral fraud and praising the agitators who invaded Congress.
Trump’s Twitter account functioned as a mix of policy announcements, often unexpected; complaints about the media; disdain for women, minorities, and those he considers his enemies; and praise to its supporters, replete with exclamation points, words written in capital letters, and one-word sayings like “Sad!”
The president has used Twitter to announce the resignation of numerous officials. His tweets, like his speeches at meetings, were a torrent of false information.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter denied access to its CEO Jack Dorsey and provided no further details.
The official account of the President of the United States, @POTUS, remains active. Trump, who issued a statement Friday night accusing Twitter of being an enemy of freedom of speech and putting forward the idea that it could develop its own “platform,” also posted this on the @POTUS account, from where it quickly was deleted.
Twitter says using another account to bypass a suspension violates its rules and, while it won’t ban government accounts like @POTUS or @WhiteHouse, “will take steps to restrict their use” .
In Trump’s Twitter-quoted tweets, the president announced that he will not attend the inauguration and referred to his supporters as “American patriots,” saying they “will have a giant voice for some time to come.” Twitter said those claims “are likely to inspire others to reproduce the acts of violence that took place on January 6, 2021, and there is multiple evidence that they are being received and understood as encouraging them to do so.”
Twitter said its policies allow world leaders to speak to the public, but said these accounts “are not quite above our standards” and cannot use the social network to incite violence. Trump had an estimated 89 million followers.
Twitter’s stock fell about 4% during after-hours trading, amid fears that the suspension of Trump’s account could affect a reduction in social network usage and ad sales.