Twitter banned President Donald Trump’s account on Friday, citing “the risk of further incitement to violence” after the deadly US Capitol insurrection on Wednesday.
Twitter has long given Trump and other world leaders broad exemptions from their rules against personal attacks, hate speech and other behavior. But in a detailed explanation posted on its blog on Friday, the company said that Trump’s recent tweets represented a glorification of violence when read in the context of the Capitol rebellion and plans circulating online for future armed protests over the possession of the President-elect Joe Biden.
The social platform has been under increasing pressure to take further action against Trump after Wednesday’s violence. On Thursday, Facebook suspended Trump’s account until January 20 and possibly indefinitely. Twitter only suspended Trump’s account for 12 hours after he posted a video that repeated false allegations about electoral fraud and praised the rioters who invaded the Capitol.
Trump’s persona on Twitter has long worked as a mix of policy ads, often out of the blue; complaints about the media; depreciation of women, minorities and their perceived enemies; and praise for your supporters, filled with exclamation points, capital letters and one-word statements like “Sad!”
He sacked several employees on Twitter and his posts, like his speeches at rallies, are a torrent of misinformation.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter declined to provide CEO Jack Dorsey and made no further comments.
The official account of the President of the United States, @POTUS, remains active. In fact, Trump, who issued a statement on Friday night denouncing Twitter as an enemy of free speech and suggesting that he could build his own “platform”, also posted it on the @POTUS account, where he was quickly deleted.
Twitter says that using another account to escape a suspension is against its rules and that while it does not prohibit government accounts like @POTUS or @WhiteHouse, it will “take steps to limit its use”.
Shannon McGregor, an assistant professor of journalism and media at the University of North Carolina, said the move allows Twitter to try to win favor with the next Biden government. Trump “has only two more weeks in power and that certainly makes it easier to deplore the president,” she said.
Others saw a more sinister omen in Twitter’s action. “Big Tech is not going to stop the president of the United States,” wrote Kay James, president of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, in a tweet. “They can ban you on the next one and everyone reading this.”
In Trump’s tweets cited on Twitter, Trump said he would not attend the inauguration and referred to his supporters as “American patriots”, saying they will have “a GIANT VOICE for a long time to come”. Twitter said that these statements “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are several indicators that they are being received and understood as an incentive to do so.”
Twitter said that its policy allows world leaders to speak to the public, but that these accounts “are not entirely above our rules” and cannot use Twitter to incite violence. Trump had about 89 million followers. Twitter shares fell about 4% in after-hours trading, reflecting concerns that Trump’s ban could reduce advertising use and sales.
Jonathan Greenblatt, who runs the Anti-Defamation League, said on Friday that banning Trump was an “excellent step” and “an appropriate end to a legacy of hate and vitriol.” ADL was part of a coalition of civil rights and defense groups on Friday, calling for Twitter to ban Trump’s account.
Twitter, long accused of treating the president with kid gloves, began policing Trump more aggressively in the early days of the general presidential campaign, when the company began aggressively labeling its fake tweets about alleged widespread election fraud as contested. A permanent permanent suspension was almost unimaginable – at least until he lost his candidacy for re-election.
In May, after Trump tweeted the phrase “when looting begins, shooting begins” in response to protests in Minneapolis, Twitter added a warning label to his post for the first time. Tensions between Trump and Twitter have only increased since then.
Banning Trump entirely was a big step for the company – if one that she avoided until the president became a lame duck and her biggest rival, Facebook, has banned him indefinitely.
Now that Trump has been knocked down from one of his favorite pulpits, he can turn to other online channels like Parler, a freer alternative to 2-year-old Twitter that has become increasingly popular with the president’s most fervent supporters. Many used the forum to spread falsehoods and hateful comments.
But Parler, who was already tiny compared to Twitter, has bigger problems that could threaten his future. Google suspended Parler from its app store on Friday because of ongoing posts that seek to “incite continuing violence in the U.S.” The company cited an “ongoing and urgent threat to public security” and said Parler would not be reinstated until the problems were resolved.
Apple issued a similar warning to Parler and gave him 24 hours to fix things. Parler CEO John Matze said in a post that the company “will not give in to politically motivated companies and those authoritarian people who hate freedom of speech”.
While Trump may migrate to Parler, Gab or some other alternative website, this will greatly limit his influence, said McGregor. Trump has always longed for legitimacy and position in the mainstream media, despite his complaints about normal journalism that he has long referred to as “fake news”. He will not achieve this on other platforms, she said.
Democratic MP Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement on Friday that Facebook and YouTube should also ban Trump.
On Friday, Twitter also permanently banned two Trump loyalists – former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell – as part of a broader purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory. Twitter said it will take action on behavior that could cause harm offline.
“Given the renewed potential for violence around this type of behavior in the coming days, we will permanently suspend accounts that are exclusively dedicated to sharing QAnon content,” said Twitter in an e-mailed statement. The company also said Trump’s lawyer Lin Wood was permanently suspended on Tuesday for violating his rules, but did not provide further details.
Dozens of QAnon’s social media accounts were publicizing Trump’s January 6 rally in central Washington, expressing hope that this could lead to a turnaround in election results.
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AP technology writers Michael Liedtke, Barbara Ortutay and Frank Bajak contributed to this article.