“President Trump needs to do the right thing and unequivocally condemn yesterday’s violence,” she said. “There are no excuses for the mob and what happened at Casa do Povo.”
Democratic panel chairman, Congressman Frank Pallone (DN.J.), on Wednesday asked technology companies to “remove” Trump for “inciting violence and spreading dangerous misinformation” online after his supporters broke into the building of the Capitol.
The debate over how Congress and Silicon Valley should respond to the outbreak of violence in Washington, DC, started a day after Facebook, its photo sharing platform Instagram and Twitter froze the president’s accounts. Zuckerberg announced on Thursday an indefinite suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts, at least until President-elect Joe Biden took office.
“We believe that the risks of allowing the president to continue using our service during this period are simply too great,” wrote Zuckerberg in a statement posted on his personal page. “So we are extending the blocking that we put on your Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition in power is complete.”
Twitter and Facebook froze Trump’s accounts on Wednesday in reaction to the president’s incendiary response to a crowd of his supporters who invaded the United States Capitol, in addition to removing several Trump posts – including a video in which he called the protesters “very special” and professed his admiration for them.
Separately, YouTube removed this video for violating its policies against content that allegedly rampant voter fraud in the 2020 elections, although it would allow others to publish the video if it added context.
YouTube added on Thursday that because of Wednesday’s violence, anyone who posts a new video making false claims about widespread electoral fraud will receive a “strike” that restricts their ability to send or transmit. Three attacks in 90 days will mean the permanent removal of the channel.
The violent violation left at least four people dead and caused members of Congress and their teams to crouch for hours waiting for protesters to leave the building after the Capitol police force was taken by surprise by the mass of Trump supporters.
Zuckerberg said that the way Trump dealt with the protesters “correctly upset people in the United States and around the world”, and that he has crossed the line of what the company is willing to accept.
“In recent years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform according to our own rules, sometimes removing content or labeling his posts when they violated our policies,” he wrote. “We did this because we believe that the public has the right to the widest possible access to political discourse, even controversial discourse. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving the use of our platform to incite a violent uprising against a democratically elected government. “
Social media companies have long struggled to calibrate their approach to false and potentially dangerous information on their platforms, coming from Trump and other prominent political leaders. They have stepped up their application in the race for the election and its aftermath, but the actions of the past 24 hours are a dramatic escalation of their confrontation with the incumbent president.
Twitter restricted Trump’s account for the first time on Wednesday and ordered him to delete several posts to regain access to his favorite medium. The company also threatened to take him off the platform completely, a major upheaval, as it repeatedly suspended previous calls to do so while Trump was in the Oval Office.
“Our public interest policy – which has guided our enforcement action in this area for years – ends where we believe the risk of harm is greater and / or more serious,” said a Twitter spokesman on Wednesday.
As a result of being blocked, Trump was forced to issue a statement agreeing to an “orderly transition” of power for President-elect Joe Biden via senior White House communications advisor Dan Scavino after Congress officially certified the victory of the Electoral College of the United States. new president.
Corporate actions this week still do not address the deeper problem, said Senate Intelligence President Mark Warner (D-Va.), In a statement, pointing to years of concern about the role of online platforms as breeding grounds and bases. organization for right-wing extremists.
“While I am pleased to see social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube taking time-consuming steps to deal with the president’s misuse of their platforms to sow discord and violence, these isolated actions come too late and don’t come close enough” . Warner said.