Twitter stated on Friday evening that it was permanently suspending President Donald Trump’s account “because of the danger of additional incitement of violence,” two days after the tragic rebellion at the U.S. Capitol.
Social media giant Twitter said in a series of tweets from its @TwitterSafety account that Trump’s account had continued to violate the rules despite being warned by temporarily locking Trump’s account on Wednesday evening following the insurrection that resulted in the deaths of at least six people at the Capitol or from injuries sustained there.
Twitter announced that it had permanently suspended the @realDonaldTrump account “due to the danger of additional encouragement of violence” after a review of recent Tweets from the account and the context surrounding them. We made it clear on Wednesday that further violations of the Twitter Rules could result in this same course of action, and that was in the context of the awful events this week.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced the day before that Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts would be permanently suspended at least through President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20 because of “the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
A pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote, and Trump tweeted a brief video ordering the occupying group to go home and telling them they were “loved” and “special.”
In the short video, Trump proceeded to disseminate falsehoods about the presidential election, alleging again that it was rigged and stolen. A little while later, he also sent out a text tweet with essentially the same message. The President tweeted on Wednesday that these incidents occurred because “great patriots who have been cruelly and unfairly treated for so long” had their “holy landslide election triumph” taken from them in an “unceremonious and vicious” manner. Sending love and peace your way as you return home. Don’t let the memory of this day fade away.
Twitter’s initial response was to prevent any interaction with both tweets, including likes, retweets, and replies. Eventually, the account was suspended for 12 hours. After the ban was removed on Friday, Trump simply sent out two tweets. The first was to applaud people who voted for him, stating that they “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any manner, shape or form!!!” He announced on his last tweet (at least from this now-deleted account) that he would not be present at Biden’s inauguration.
In many ways, Twitter has come to define his administration, from the cryptic “Covfefe” to the all-caps shouts of “WITCH HUNT.” Using it as a policy wishlist, a club to publicly criticise his adversaries or remove members of his Administration, and his favoured method of offering political endorsements, he amassed more than 88 million followers.
Trump’s use of Twitter, and his criticism of the corporation, have both skyrocketed in the past year. During 2020 and in the build-up to the election, he would tweet and retweet occasionally 200 tweets a day. It was the first time that Twitter had ever labelled a tweet as an “unsubstantiated assertion” when in May of 2020, Trump posted an unfounded accusation that mail-in ballots would be “significantly fraudulent” in elections. Twitter’s warnings to the president have increased as he has circulated false information regarding elections and the COVID-19 outbreak over the platform.
Trump and other prominent Republicans have called for the removal of Section 230 of the Internet Legislative Act in 1996, which would alter the criteria under which litigation might be launched against social media sites, claiming that they perceive Twitter’s actions as censorship. Earlier this month, Trump vetoed a bipartisan defence spending package because it did not include language that would defend him against his alleged censorship, demonstrating how strongly he feels about removing this tiny piece of the law. His veto was eventually overturned by Congress.
Shortly after his inauguration, the significance of the President’s tweets became clear, despite initial confusion about whether the pronouncements were to be recognised as official White House announcements. As Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer declared in the spring of 2017 that the President’s tweets were to be taken as White House statements. While Trump was in office, several courts reached the same conclusion. In 2019, a federal appeals court issued a ruling on the legitimacy of President Trump’s Twitter account, ruling unanimously that he had violated the Constitution by barring people on the social media platform, effectively preventing U.S. citizens from accessing official public comments.
