- A watchdog group moored a boat in front of Jack Dorsey’s waterfront home in San Francisco, demanding that Twitter permanently ban President Trump after Wednesday’s siege of the United States Capitol.
- The 30-foot boat is equipped with a banner that says “Twitter: Ban Trump” and sits on the water with Dorsey’s Sea Cliff mansion nestled on the cliff above.
- Internet platforms, including Twitter, have taken action against Trump since Wednesday after he continued to spread baseless allegations of electoral fraud while his supporters violently violated Capitol walls, leaving five dead.
- Twitter blocked his account until he deleted some tweets, although Trump is now once again posting on the platform. Facebook banned Trump until at least January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
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A consumer watchdog docked a boat in front of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s waterfront mansion in San Francisco, demanding that his platform banish President Donald Trump after the US Capitol siege on Wednesday .
SumOfUs docked the 30-foot boat with a banner saying “Twitter: Ban Trump” on Friday as part of its campaign urging Twitter and Facebook to crack down on Trump online. A petition has also been signed by 70,000 people demanding that platforms permanently ban Trump.
“Donald Trump has a proven record of using social media to post and amplify harmful misinformation – from Covid’s lies to baseless allegations of electoral fraud, as well as his incitement to violence,” said Emma Ruby-Sachs, executive director of SumOfUS, in a press release shared with Insider. “He is another striking example of Big Tech’s love affair with extremism and violence. They need to ban him forever and then fix the algorithms that gave rise to this terrorist movement.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Reports show that siege organizers gathered in far-right pockets of the Internet until January 6, including Twitter, Facebook, Parler and TheDonald, a site that was once a banned forum from Reddit last summer for hate speech violations, as NBC News reported the day before the attack.
Read More: Trump’s ban on Facebook is just ‘a wound wound dressing’, critics say – but no one can agree on the best way to eliminate the contagion of disinformation
Trump has spread baseless allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, allegations that fueled the anger of many of his supporters, including those who attended a U.S. Capitol rally hours before some broke into the federal building and vandalized its hallways.
As pro-Trump extremists passed the Capitol, Trump posted a video on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in which he told his followers “go home, we love you, you are very special”, while also falsely declaring that the election was fraudulent and that he won with an “overwhelming victory”.
All three platforms responded to electoral misinformation: Facebook and YouTube removed the video, and Twitter initially attached a label explaining that users could not re-circulate it “due to an increased risk of violence”. Twitter, however, later also removed the video and blocked Trump’s account, although the president now has access to it again.
Since then, Facebook has taken the unprecedented decision to ban Trump from posting until at least January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden takes office. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the action was taken because “the risks of allowing the president to continue using our service during this period are simply too great”.
During the siege, Twitter users once again called for Trump’s account to be suspended, but he enjoys certain protections from “world leader” as president of the United States. According to Twitter, what he says is in the public interest, even if it violates the rules. Dorsey, however, confirmed in November that he will lose those privileges on January 20.